serialize {serialize}R Documentation

Simple Serialization Interface

Description

A simple interface for serializing to connections.

Usage

serialize(object, connection, ascii = FALSE, refhook = NULL)
unserialize(connection, refhook = NULL)

Arguments

object object to serialize.
connection an open connection.
ascii logical; specifies whether to use ascii or binary format
refhook hook function for handling reference objects

Details

The function serialize writes object to the specified connection. Sharing of reference objects is preserved within the object but not across separate calls to serialize. If connection is NULL then object is serialized to a string, which is returned as the result of serialize. For a text mode connection, the default value of code{ascii} is set to TRUE

unserialize reads an object from connection. connection may also be a string.

The refhook functions can be used to customize handling of non-system reference objects (all external pointers and weak references, and all environments other than name space and package environments and .GlobalEnv). The hook function for serialize should return a character vector for references it wants to handle; otherwise it should return NULL. The hook for unserialize will be called with character vectors supplied to serialize and should return an appropriate object.

Author(s)

Luke Tierney

Examples

x<-serialize(list(1,2,3),NULL)
unserialize(x)

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