# Marshal.dump(obj) as String bug?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 26, 2005, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885 "2005-11-26T05:41:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/d78d45/32.png) [@hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hcatlin)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885/1 "2005-11-26T05:41:36Z")

</div>

Alright, so I’ve been scratching my head about this along with some  
folks over at #ruby-lang.

This may be a known problem, but after spending a few minutes  
searching, I can’t find any reference… so I’ll document it here.

If you take some object and marshal it, then try and concat that  
string, it produces some funny results.

Here is the test case that I’ve discovered. I’m thinking this is  
happening because Marshal sends back some weird characters that are  
screwing up the string methods. But, I would still classify that as a  
bug, because when an object returns a string, that should always be a  
fairly safe string to handle or it should be returning something else.  
That would be an invalid or misformed string if you can’t even use the  
regular expressions on it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#I’m running ruby 1.8.3 on ubuntu  
#email hcatlin at [gmail.com](http://gmail.com) with any help

```
class MyObject
	def initialize
		@name = "testvar"
		@array = Array.new
	end

```

end

```
test = MyObject.new
dumpresult = Marshal.dump(test)
puts 'Result: ' << dumpresult # Expected: "Result: MYOBJECTDUMP"
puts 'Result=' << Marshal.dump(test) #Expected "Result=MYOBJECTDUMP"
puts 'Result: ' + dumpresult # Expected: "Result: MYOBJECTDUMP"
puts 'Result=' + Marshal.dump(test) #Expected "Result=MYOBJECTDUMP"
puts "U=" << Marshal.dump(test) # Expected "U=MYOBJECTDUMP"

#My result is this code below.

```

#MyObject:

# @array[:

#@name"  
#testvar  
#MyObject:

# @array[:

#@name"  
#testvar  
#MyObject:

# @array[:

#@name"  
#testvar  
#MyObject:

# @array[:

#@name"  
#testvar  
#MyObject:

# @array[:

#@name"  
#testvar

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/d78d45/32.png) [@hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hcatlin)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 5:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885/2 "2005-11-26T05:57:42Z")

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Hi –

On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, Hampton wrote:

> happening because Marshal sends back some weird characters that are
> 
> puts 'Result: ’ \<\< dumpresult # Expected: “Result: MYOBJECTDUMP”  
> #@name"
> 
> # @array[:
> 
> #@name"  
> #testvar  
> #MyObject:
> 
> # @array[:
> 
> #@name"  
> #testvar

If you use p instead of puts you’ll see what’s going on:

“Result: \004\010o:\rMyObject\a:\v@array[\000:\n@name”\ftestvar"

Note the \r, which does a carriage return. Then what follows  
overwrites what came before (when you do a puts).

You can work around this by doing:

puts “Result:\n” \<\< dumpresult

David

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/d78d45/32.png) [@hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hcatlin)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 2:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885/3 "2005-11-27T14:45:53Z")

</div>

Thanks david, that makes a lot of sense.

Also, it makes sense as to why socket.gets was having issues with  
it… because it was stopping at the \r.

Thanks,  
Hampton.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/d78d45/32.png) [@hcatlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hcatlin)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 6:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshal-dump-obj-as-string-bug/48885/4 "2005-11-26T06:05:45Z")

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On Nov 25, 2005, at 10:37 PM, Hampton wrote:

> I’m thinking this is happening because Marshal sends back some  
> weird characters that are  
> screwing up the string methods. But, I would still classify that as a  
> bug, because when an object returns a string, that should always be a  
> fairly safe string to handle or it should be returning something else.

I think of Marshal as returning binary data. In Ruby, we store that  
in a String.

James Edward G. II