Julia: how stable are serialize() / deserialize()

Question

I am considering the use of serialize() and deserialize() for all of my data i/o due to their convenience. I do not, however, want to be stuck with unreadable files on a Julia update.

How stable are serialize() and deserialize()? Should they work between updates of 0.3? Can I expect safe behavior if I stick to basic types like arrays of Float64?

Thank you.

This is probably a better question for the julia-users mailing list. — mbauman
– mbauman, Commented Jul 25, 2014 at 19:19

ivarne · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-26 08:10:43Z

7

If you want to store data you might depend on being able to read in the future, you should not use a format that will incorporate breaking changes if/when someone finds it useful. As far as I understand the default serialization format is for network communications, so it is designed for maximum performance.

There is also the HDF5.jl package that uses a documented format and a common library that has wrappers for different languages.

answered Jul 26, 2014 at 8:10

ivarne

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tencnivel Over a year ago

the problem with HDF5 is that there are types that you can't serialize. For example, I just got the following error when trying to serialize a GLM model: "MethodError: no method matching write(::HDF5File, ::String, ::StatsModels.DataFrameRegressionModel)"

user207421 · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-25 23:51:38Z

5

I believe the official answer here is, "people will try not to break the serialization format, but you shouldn't depend upon on it."

edited Jul 25, 2014 at 23:51

user207421

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answered Jul 25, 2014 at 22:46

John Myles White

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John Myles White Over a year ago

You can treat the combination of the official docs with Jeff's comment on this diff as a citation. julia.readthedocs.org/en/latest/stdlib/base + github.com/JuliaLang/julia/commit/…

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