matz,

well, i'll be damned, you are right. on your cue i went to recause the 
problem. but i was able to remove the post and pre methods and it still 
works! i do not know what originally caused marshal to spiral out of control, 
but it is now gone. i'm not sure what i changed that effected it so. the 
program is rather complex so it is hard to say. i will keep my eye out for 
any reoccurance, though, and i will isolate it and let you know if it 
reappears.

thanks,
-transami


On Saturday 04 January 2003 12:08 am, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In message "Cyclic Marshals :: again the need for a built in creation
> parent method"
>
>     on 03/01/04, Tom Sawyer <transami / transami.net> writes:
> |okay, after way too many hours i was finally able to Marshal my objects
> | and overcome the cyclic references that caused a spiraling depth problem.
> | unfortunately it is not a general purpose solution. i could not figure a
> | way to do that. rather i created two methods, a #pre_dump methods that
> | nil'd out the specific cyclic references in my objects before the
> | #Marshal.dump and a #post_load method that restores them after the
> | #Marshal.load.
>
> Hmm, marshal should handle cyclic references. Could you show us the
> example program that cause you a problem?
>
> 							matz.