Can I serialize C++ function pointer ? I search around and found that it could not be done ( although I am not sure ).
If it can not be done, whats the explanation about it ?
Thanks
If you think about it, I mean it makes perfect sense. Consider a more common example: Serializing a directed graph. Each node of course has pointers to the nodes it can reach. When you serialize this graph, do you actually serialize the *pointer*? Of course not, because every time you run the program it's at a different memory location. So when serializing data pointers, you have to resort to different techniques. For example, give each node a unique id, serialize each node, and then the ids of the nodes that can be reached. On deserialization, reconstruct the transitions from the ids.
Ultimately you're going to have to do the same thing here: Serialize enough information that allows you to determine upon deserialization which function is actually being referred to. For example, if this is an exported function, you could serialize the name of the module from which it's exported as well as the name of the function. Then you could reconstruct this at runtime by using dlopen/dlsym (linux) or LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress (windows).
If it is not a function exported from any library, but an arbitrary private function that may point anywhere in your code base (or for that matter in the code segment of some other module that also happens to be loaded in your process), then you need to figure out a way to serialize enough information that you can reconstruct it at runtime and it's going to be complicated, although if it were really important I can think of a few areas to begin looking into.