serialization and globalization

[Stephen Weeks]

> Just what kinds of things are you thinking of serialization as being good for?

I am using it right now for a (variant of a) chess server cgi script.
The server script does the following
	* deserialize its state from a file
	* interpret the url query, often causing a state change
	* serialize its state to a file 
I also use (de)serialization to build and interprete the query strings
which the server processes.  This approach made it really easy to
write, since I didn't have to think much at all about CGI or urls or
serializing the state or queries myself.  I'm not having any problems
with the messages, since they are immutable, but the state is not, and
I am constantly getting screwed by refs that get globalized and then
lost because they aren't restored with deserialization.

Truth be told, I tried using saveWorld, which should avoid these
problems, but there is clearly some bug in it right now that is
causing too much to get saved (by three orders of magnitude).