In general the process of taking some convoluted internal data structure and generating a linear representation of it that can be used to reconstruct the internal data structures at a later time. This is the fundament underlying persistence and transfer of complex data over channels. Examples on the wiki * [Serializing a Bitmap] * [Serializing a Photo] * [Serializing a Canvas widget] * [Serializing a Widget] * [Serializing a Text widget] * [A Widget Serializer] * [Dumping interpreter state]: [proc]s, [global]s, [interp aliases], [package require]ments [RS] notes that most serialization worries from other languages are no problem in Tcl where [everything is a string] ... [TV] But in various cases it should be so much simpler... Agreed, though. ''[escargo] 21 Feb 2004'' - This could also be seen as an implementation of the '''Memento''' design pattern. ---- [Category Concept]