Method: Marshal.dump

Defined in:

marshal.c

.dump(obj[, anIO], limit = -1) ⇒ Object

Serializes obj and all descendant objects. If anIO is specified, the serialized data will be written to it, otherwise the data will be returned as a String. If limit is specified, the traversal of subobjects will be limited to that depth. If limit is negative, no checking of depth will be performed.

class Klass
  def initialize(str)
    @str = str
  end
  def say_hello
    @str
  end
end

(produces no output)

o = Klass.new("hello\n")
data = Marshal.dump(o)
obj = Marshal.load(data)
obj.say_hello  #=> "hello\n"

Marshal can't dump following objects:

• anonymous Class/Module.

• objects which related to its system (ex: Dir, File::Stat, IO, File, Socket and so on)

• an instance of MatchData, Data, Method, UnboundMethod, Proc, Thread, ThreadGroup, Continuation

• objects which defines singleton methods

# File 'marshal.c'

static VALUE
marshal_dump(int argc, VALUE *argv)
{
VALUE obj, port, a1, a2;
int limit = -1;
struct dump_arg *arg;
volatile VALUE wrapper;

port = Qnil;
rb_scan_args(argc, argv, "12", &obj, &a1, &a2);
if (argc == 3) {
if (!NIL_P(a2)) limit = NUM2INT(a2);
if (NIL_P(a1)) goto type_error;
port = a1;
}