Value serialization

Serialize converts Value to a raw string on Bytes. Deserialize converts Bytes back to Value. Both provide Success and Error outlets; Error is empty on success, and a failure clears the result rather than leaving the previous result valid.

Formats

• JSON: strict UTF-8 JSON. Impulses become null, lists and vectors become arrays. Serialize’s Pretty print indents JSON without reducing precision.
• CBOR: the JSON-compatible subset, with UTF-8 text map keys. Tags, byte strings and undefined values are not supported.
• Text: Plain writes raw strings, delimited flat lists/vectors, and JSON for nested containers. Set Delimiter and Line ending to agree at both ends. Deserialize’s Interpretation can be Auto, String, Integer, Float, Boolean or List. Use List when a one-field list must remain a list. String preserves text and line endings.
• Binary: FreeFlow serializes untagged scalar bytes and flattens lists/vectors; decoding uses the chosen Scalar type and returns a list. Layout specifies explicitly typed fields. Byte order selects little or big endian unless overridden by the layout.

A binary Layout uses a subset of Python’s struct notation: for example <B H I f 4s 2x means little-endian packed fields, a four-byte string, and two padding bytes. Ns requires an exact-size raw string; it does not pad or truncate it. Sender and receiver must agree on the layout.

Limits and round trips

Values must fit score’s int32 and finite float32 representation. The converters enforce limits of 8 MiB, 65,536 nodes and 64 nested containers. Vectors decode as lists, not their original vector type. Text Pretty is a human-readable display with rounded floats, not a lossless archive; use JSON for structured interchange instead. Binary FreeFlow is not self-describing and does not encode maps or impulses.

Use String / byte conversion when the next process expects a list of byte integers rather than a raw string.

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