Perl's `Storable` springs to mind here - I know many places who have mini-"databases" that are effectively straight dumps of Perl variables to disk that get loa

Perl's `Storable` springs to mind here - I know many places who have mini-"databases" that are effectively straight dumps of Perl variables to disk that get loaded in, worked on, then saved back out. I guess Smalltalk's images are the ur-example here?