Question

I am using Marshal class to serialize a Ruby object, using the functions: dump() and load() everything works well, but when a value not related to any serialized data is passed, the load() function returns the expected and logical error:

incompatible marshal file format (can't be read)
format version 4.8 required; 45.45 given

What I need is to check if this data had already been serialized or not before loading it. My goal is to avoid this error and do something else.

Answer 1

Maybe just rescue from the error?

begin
  Marshal.load("foobar")
rescue TypeError
  # not a marshalled object, do something else
  puts "warning: could not load ..."
end