data jam/preserves

Quote:

Quote:

I heard that Python or maybe Ruby has a feature that transforms a
complex data structure into something simple data structure that can be
saved into a file. For example a structure containing several lists,
vectors set etc. is transformed into a possible long vector of
integeres. The transformation is reversible. This way it is easy to
save and load the state of a running application.

Is there something like this for C++? I have the following application
in mind: I'd like to write parallel C++ code with MPI but I need to
pass very complex data (built with the STL) between the nodes. MPI is
very simplistic to this is a difficult task. If I had an encode/decode
function pair that creates a vector of integers from any data, then
this encoded simplified data preserve can be passed easily between the
nodes.

Nandor