This is not an easy question to answer. No doubt, you'll see quick posts saying "use Date::Dumper", "use YAML" or some other serialization technique.

But then what. So you decide the pick YAML, what's next? That's the wrong time to start asking questions. First you have to know, what is that data I need to save? Why am I saving? Is it for persistence, that is, do I have to be able to reconstruct the object? It might be that all you need to save is everything reachable from the object ref. But what about class data? Is the class keeping track of the objects? Perhaps it's keeping count of how many objects are out there - perhaps you use fly-weight objects or Inside Out Objects. Then there will be (possible lexical) data in the classes that need to be saved too.

So you first have to determine what you need to save to be able to reconstruct. Determine what kind of relations there are between the pieces of data that need extra attention. For instance, the class puts the various objects of that class in a hash, using the objects as keys. Which means, the keys are the stringified forms of the references. On restoring, you most likely get different addresses for your references, and hence the stringified form is likely to be different. Then your saved class data is useless, and you have a major data corruption.

Having decided what to store, and what meta data to store, then you can focus your attention which technique to use. Not all techniques are perfect. Code references are hard to serialize. Some techniques turn strings into numbers on certain conditions, which can lead to data corruption again. (Numifying and then stringifying "5.000" gives you "5", not "5.000").

So, what the "best way" can't be determined until you have implemented more of it. In fact even the question "what is a correct way" can't be answered yet.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Flat File Fun (or You Just Saved My Class) by Abigail-II
in thread Flat File Fun (or You Just Saved My Class) by abitkin

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