Simple data serializer for Lua 5.0+

git clone https://www.klva.cz/src/lua/serialize.lua.git

serialize.lua

Simple data serializer for Lua 5.0 and higher.

Usage

local serialize = require('serialize')
serialize({ true, "hello", 5 })

Results in:

{
    true,
    "hello",
    5,
}

Nested, indexed, associative (or both indexed and associative) tables are supported (and properly indented) as well as all primitive types. Strings are safely escaped using native string.format('%q').

You can create simple serialization to file like this:

file:write('return ' .. serialize(data))

Load serialized data by simply calling require on the file or use load (or loadstring).

Attempting to serialize a function results in an error.

See serialize.spec.lua file for more examples.