Marshalling

Definitions

1. The process of transforming in-memory objects into a format suitable for transmission across a network or process boundary — including serialization, type annotation, and byte-order conversion. Unmarshalling is the reverse. Distinct from pure serialization in that marshalling often includes metadata needed for reconstruction in a different runtime.

   In plain English: Converting data from a program's internal format into a portable format that can be sent over a network and reassembled on the other end.

   Example: "gRPC marshalls the request struct into protobuf bytes, sends it over HTTP/2, and unmarshalls it on the server side."

Related Terms

• Message Passing
• Pipe
• Object Graph
• Platform Channel
• Protocol Buffer
• Shared Memory
• Unix Domain Socket
• Unix Socket
• XPC