dump

Serializes obj and all descendant objects. If anIO is specified, the serialized data will be written to it, otherwise the data will be returned as a String. If limit is specified, the traversal of subobjects will be limited to that depth. If limit is negative, no checking of depth will be performed.

class Klass
  def initialize(str)
    @str = str
  end
  def say_hello
    @str
  end
end

(produces no output)

o = Klass.new("hello\n")
data = Marshal.dump(o)
obj = Marshal.load(data)
obj.say_hello  #=> "hello\n"

Marshal can’t dump following objects:

• anonymous Class/Module.

• objects which are related to system (ex: Dir, File::Stat, IO, File, Socket and so on)

• an instance of MatchData, Data, Method, UnboundMethod, Proc, Thread, ThreadGroup, Continuation

• objects which define singleton methods