How to serialize an array and deserialize back

Question

How do I serialize an array and deserialize it back from a string? I tried the following code, but it doesn\'t really return the original array of integers but does for the arra

Answer 1

The standard way is with Marshal:

x = Marshal.dump([1, 2, 3])
#=> "\x04\b[\bi\x06i\ai\b"

Marshal.load(x)
#=> [1, 2, 3]

But you can also do it with JSON:

require 'json'

x = [1, 2, 3].to_json
#=> "[1,2,3]"

JSON::parse(x)
#=> [1, 2, 3]

Or YAML:

require 'yaml'

x = [1, 2, 3].to_yaml
#=> "---\n- 1\n- 2\n- 3\n"

YAML.load(x)
#=> [1, 2, 3]