Data Serialization in Perl examples

Mar 8, 2011 • Pradeep Pant

One can store data and objects into a file using Serialization. The bytes that is generated can then be re-used to generate an object that will be identical (a clone) to the stored object. We can achieve this by using Storable module from CPAN. The example below will show a way to store and retrieve such objects.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use 5.006; use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; use Storable;

my %hash1 = (‘Test1’ => ‘10’, ‘Test2’ => ‘20’);

store %hash1, “serialized_file”; print “##### HASH1 #####n”; print Dumper(%hash1);

my %hash2 = %{retrieve “serialized_file”}; print “n##### HASH2 #####n”; print Dumper(%hash2);

exit 0; </pre>

Output:

##### HASH1 #####
$VAR1 = {
          'Test2' => '20',
          'Test1' => '10'
        };

##### HASH2 ##### $VAR1 = { ’Test2’ => ‘20’, ’Test1’ => ‘10’ }; For more info see perldoc Storable</pre>

Serialization is used to store data and objects into a file for instance. The serie of bytes that is generated can then be re-used to generate an object that will be identical (a clone) to the stored object.