Re: string serialization of builtin datatypes

[Philip Nienhuis]

Oliver Heimlich wrote:
> On 06.05.2015 19:47, Andreas Weber wrote:
> > Dear users,
> >
> > I once wrote a serialize function
> > (https://github.com/octave-de/serialize) to get a human readable string
> > representation of built in datatypes. To restore the var just call eval.
> > The intended purpose is to serialize objects for transmission over
> > byte-stream channels (serial, tcp...) or for storage in databases while
> > perserve the readability by humans(in contrast to the usage of
> > typecast(x, "uint8" for example).
> >
> > Does anyone see an octave-forge package this might fit in?
>
> Andy,
>
> the function might fit into the io package, but I am not sure.
>
> Some remarks for improvement of the function:
>   - If you want to ensure exact restoration of the original value, you
> certainly want to increase the precision during the call to mat2str for
> binary64 numbers.
>   - Also you should vectorize function evaluation with the usage of
> cellfun/structfun instead of for-loops.
>
> > btw: Do we have a function which checks a string for malicious code
> > before evaluating? For example wget, system, unlink and so on.
>
> I don't think it exists. This is the big disadvantage of serializing
> data into code that has to be eval'ed. Did you try JSON or YAML as a
> readable kind of serialization?

<io pkg maintainer here>

If a number of devs think that io would be a good or maybe even the best 
place, just prepare a cs.
But only if it is properly documented, contains tests or some other way 
to validate proper operation, and there's someone who maintains it (not 
necessarily the author).

In io there's already a JSON function. I know vaguely what it does 
(objects to JSON conversion) but have no idea about relative quality. It 
may well be that it is effectively unmaintained ATM. It does have a few 
tests.
I just package it with the rest and hope for the best :-)

FYI: I plan to make a 2.2.8 io release around May 20 or so (hopefully in 
time for Octave-4.0.0 final), after I'm back from a trip abroad.

Philip