Comments on: YAML vs Marshal performance

By: Ruby benchmarks » Kernel::rand

Ruby benchmarks » Kernel::rand — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:09:28 +0000

[...] Link: http://significantbits.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/yaml-vs-marshal-performance/ [...]

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:01:29 +0000

I tried your code with our YAML.dump replacement algorithm, code-named ZAML.dump[1]:

YAMLize hash: 2.592796 seconds
ZAMLize hash: 0.987091 seconds

The link below details a 16x improvement with real-world data.

[1] http://gnomecoder.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/yaml-dump-1600-percent-faster/

By: Ramon Guiu

Ramon Guiu — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:37:09 +0000

Thanks for sharing. I guess, however, that you cannot serialize any object as JSON and then unserialize it as you loose the type information and therefore you are unable to reconstruct the original object.
If you just need to serialize hashes, arrays and basic types then it’s probably a better choice because, as you say, it allows you to store the context on the client if needed.

By: Troy Kruthoff

Troy Kruthoff — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:50:38 +0000

I was curious as to how JSON would compare, so I added it to the tests:

Marshal hash: 0.12498 seconds
Reload marshalled hash: 0.145168 seconds
YAMLize hash: 3.655557 seconds
Reload YAMLize hash: 0.844616 seconds
JSONize hash: 0.183414 seconds
Reload JSONize hash: 0.211665 seconds

Marshal is still the clear winner, but JSON holds its own and is portable to store the state on the client (browser) as well.