The page [Persistent incr-Tcl objects] got me thinking about persistence.

Here's a function which constructs a script which, when evaluated in global scope, will do what I think I want:

  # serialize extracts all variables and their current values into a script
  # such that `eval [serialize obj]' will set obj to those values
  proc serialize {obj} {
      set result ""
      foreach var [$obj info variable] {
	  foreach {type name} [$obj info variable $var -type -name] break
	  if {([namespace tail $name] != "this") && ($type != "common")} {
	      set name "@itcl $obj $name"
	      if {[catch {
		  append result "set \"${name}\" [string toupper [set $name]]\n"
	      } err]} {
		  puts stderr "err: $err"
	      }
	  }
      }
      return $result
  }

Here's a small test:

  class test_persist {
      common com com_val
      private variable priv priv_val
      public variable pub pub_val
      protected variable prot prot_val

      constructor {} {
	  set priv priv_v
	  set pub pub_v
	  set prot prot_v
      }
  }

  class test_p1 {
      inherit test_persist
      public variable sub_pub sub_pub
      private variable sub_priv sub_priv

      method test {} {
	  foreach var [$this info variable] {
	      foreach {type name val} [$this info variable $var -type -name -value] break
	      puts "$name = $val"
	  }
      }

      constructor {} {
	  # needs to be here
      }
  }

  test_p1 t
  puts "Vars: [t info variable]"
  set dump [serialize t]
  puts "DUMP: $dump"
  eval $dump
  puts [serialize t]
  t test

[CMcC]
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