I have tried this: $Data::Dumper::Purity = 1; open(FILE,"> $file") || die "Can't open $file:$!"; print FILE Data::Dumper->Dump([\$G],['*G']); close FILE || die "Can't close $file:$!"; where $G is a graph of type Graph::Directed. This results in a text file that looks reasonably like my data. Then I try to read it in with something like this: do $file || die "Can't recreate tvinfo: $! $@"; or this: open(FILE,$file) || die "Can't open $file: $!"; undef $/; eval ; die "Can't recreate object from $file: $@" if $@; In both cases it gets read in just fine, that is there are no errors. But when I try to use the object just as I had before, for instance: my @V = $G->vertices; I get the following result: Can't call method "vertices" on unblessed reference at read-dump.pl line 14. So I try to bless $G: bless ($G, Graph::Directed); and I now get: Not a HASH reference at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Graph/Base.pm line 96. So now I am stuck. I have also tried Storage, with no luck. Austin PS - I think at this point I am just going to write the graph to a textfile by hand and read it by hand, but I imagine there is a way to do this. Bill Nash wrote: > Data::Dumper may be what you're looking for. > > - billn