I have a collection of objects at runtime, which is already serializable, I need to persist the state of the object to a file. I did a quick coding using BinaryFormatter and saved A serialized object to a file.

I was thinking that I can save object per line. but when i open the file in a notepad, it was longer than a line. It wasnt scrolling. How can i store an binary serialized object per line?

I am aware that i can use a separator after each object so while reading them back to the application, i can know the end of the object. Well, according to information theory, this increases the size of the data(Sipser book).

What s the best algorithm to come up with a separator that woudldnt break the information?

Instead of binary serialization? Do you think JSon format is more feasible? can i store the entity in a json format, line by line?

Also, serialization/deserialization introduces overhead, hits the performance. Would Json be faster?

ideas?

Thanks.

Thanks.

Serialization functions like a FIFO queue, you dont have to read parts of the file because the formatter does it for you you just have to know the order you pushed objects inside.

public class Test
    {

        public void testSerialize()
        {
            TestObj obj = new TestObj();
            obj.str = "Some String";
            IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            Stream stream = new FileStream("MyFile.bin", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None);
            formatter.Serialize(stream, obj);
            formatter.Serialize(stream, 1);
            formatter.Serialize(stream, DateTime.Now);
            stream.Close();
        }

        public void TestDeserialize()
        {
            Stream stream = new FileStream("MyFile.bin", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.None);
            IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            TestObj obj = (TestObj)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
            int obj2 = (int)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
            DateTime dt = (DateTime)formatter.Deserialize(stream);
            stream.Close();
        }
    }

    [Serializable]
    class TestObj
    {
        public string str = "1";
        int i = 2;
    }

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