How do I serialize a variable in VimScript?

Question

I wish to save a random Vim dictionnary, let's say:

let dico = {'a' : [[1,2], [3]], 'b' : {'in': "str", 'out' : 51}}

to a file. Is there a clever way to do this? Something I could use like:

call SaveVariable(dico, "safe.vimData")
let recover = ReadVariable("safe.vimData")

Or should I build something myself with only textfiles?

Answer 1

Thanks to VanLaser (cheers), I've been able to implement these functions using string, writefile and readfile. This is not binary serialization but it works well :)

function! SaveVariable(var, file)
    " turn the var to a string that vimscript understands
    let serialized = string(a:var)
    " dump this string to a file
    call writefile([serialized], a:file)
endfun

function! ReadVariable(file)
    " retrieve string from the file
    let serialized = readfile(a:file)[0]
    " turn it back to a vimscript variable
    execute "let result = " . serialized
    return result
endfun

Use them this way:

call SaveVariable(anyvar, "safe.vimData")
let restore = ReadVariable("safe.vimData")

Enjoy!