Forum: Ruby on Rails marshal vs yaml

I notice how Rails makes heavy use of YAML serialization, but a lot of 
the
Ruby literature I come across places emphasis on Marshal. One powerful
technique with marshal is the marshal_dump and marshal_load hooks used 
to
customize storing and retrieving object states. For example, let's say I
have an object that can store as instance variables an arbitrary array 
of
integers. And let's say I simply want to marshal that array rather than 
the
whole object state, and then later retrieve that data and store it into 
an
allocated but unitialized new instance of the object. Then the 
marshal_dump
and marshal_load hooks come in handy:

class Point
  def initialize(*coords)
    @coords = coords
  end

  def marshal_dump
    @coords.pack("w*")
  end

  def marshal_load(s)
    @coords = s.unpack("w*")
  end
end

Is there a more effective way to achieve something like this in YAML 
that
the Rails community prefers?

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 10:48 PM, John Merlino <stoicism1@aol.com> wrote:

> I notice how Rails makes heavy use of YAML serialization, but a lot of the
> Ruby literature I come across places emphasis on Marshal.

Different tools for different purposes.  YAML makes it easy for a
*human* looking at something, to tell what's what, and modify it in a
way that probably won't screw everything up.  Marshalled data is
generally not intended for human viewing, let alone editing, only for
efficient reloading.

-Dave

--
Dave Aronson, T. Rex of Codosaurus, LLC... aka
Available Secret-Cleared Ruby/Rails Freelancer
(NoVa/DC/Remote); see http://www.Codosaur.us/.