Convert erlang terms to string, or decode erlang binary

Question

I have an erlang program which generates data. This data needs to be transferred via udp to a non-erlang program for further processing. I already have this part working -

Answer 1

1) you can convert any term to string using

R= io_lib:format("~p",[yourtermhere]),
lists:flatten(R)

2) you might look at erlang external binary format, a lot of other languages have libraries for encode/decode that erlang binaries format. And in erlang you can encode any term by term_to_binary

Answer 2

I'd recommend converting the erlang terms into JSON, with either of known libraries (heard good words regarding rfc4267). It'd be a trivial task to convert JSON back with any non-erlang platform, I guess. )