Marshal

http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Marshal.html

Ruby can take an object and convert it into a stream of bytes that can be stored
outside the application. This process is called marshaling. This saved object
can later be read by another instance of the application (or by a totally separate
application), and a copy of the originally saved object can be reconstituted

<br />>> str = Marshal.dump('abcd')<br />=> "\004\b\"\tabcd"<br />>> str1 = Marshal.restore(str)<br />=> "abcd"<br />