Question

Has anyone else run into this problem before? I’ve got a method that calls a generic method with a delegate, inside of a generic class. I’ve marked the class as Serializable, and it serializes without complaint. But, when I try to deserialize an object of this class, it pegs the CPU and hangs the machine.

Code example:

public delegate T CombinationFunctionDelegate<T,U,V>(U a, V b);      [Serializable] public class SDictionary<TKey, TValue> : Dictionary<TKey, TValue> {     public SDictionary()         : base()     {     }      protected SDictionary(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)         : base(info, context)     {}      [SecurityPermissionAttribute(SecurityAction.LinkDemand, Flags = SecurityPermissionFlag.SerializationFormatter)]     public override void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)     {         base.GetObjectData(info, context);     }      public List<ListItem> ToListItems()     {         return Convert(delegate(TKey key, TValue value)         {             return new ListItem(key.ToString(), value.ToString());         });     }      public List<U> Convert<U>(CombinationFunctionDelegate<U, TKey, TValue> converterFunction)     {         List<U> res = new List<U>();         foreach (TKey key in Keys)             res.Add(converterFunction(key, this[key]));          return res;     } } 

I can put an instance of this class into ViewState (for example) just fine, but when I try to extract the object from ViewState again, the CPU on the machine spikes and the deserialization call never returns (ie, infinite loop).

When I remove the ToListItems() method, everything works wonderfully. Is this really weird, or do I just not understand serialization? =)

Answer 1

Are you using VS2008 SP1? There’s a known problem with SP1.
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=361615