# Marshalling problem

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshalling-problem/50246>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 26, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshalling-problem/50246 "2005-11-26T18:31:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**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, 6:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshalling-problem/50246/1 "2005-11-26T18:31:03Z")

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Ok, I’ve already posted this once, but that was 10 hours ago and it  
still hasn’t shown up in the group, so i’m reposting it. Apologizes if  
its already shown up for anyone else…

* * *

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, 6:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/marshalling-problem/50246/2 "2005-11-26T18:47:14Z")

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Hi –

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005, Hampton wrote:

> Ok, I’ve already posted this once, but that was 10 hours ago and it  
> still hasn’t shown up in the group, so i’m reposting it. Apologizes if  
> its already shown up for anyone else…

It has shown up, as have some responses.

David