Question

I want to store multidimensional arrays in text files and reload them efficiently. The tricky part is that the array includes strings which could look like " ] , [ \\\"" or anything.

Easiest way of writing the table to file is just as my_array.inspect (right?)

How do I then recreate the array as quickly and painlessly as possible from a string read back from the text file that might look like "[\" ] , [ \\\\\\\"\"]" (as in the above case)?

Answer 1

In my opinion, this sounds like too much trouble. Use YAML instead.

require 'yaml'
a = [ [ [], [] ], [ [], [] ] ]
File.open("output.yml", "w") do |f|
  f.write a.to_yaml
end
b = YAML.load File.open('output.yml', 'r')

As an alternative, you could use JSON instead.