Does Malcolm's Binary library exist for ghc? If not, is there a standard way (ie using Haskell that works on any compiler) to dump a data structure into a file that another program or part of the same program can then pick up and read (cf "serialize" in Java)? I'm reluctant to go with a solution that's compiler-specific.

Using Show & Read is the only really portable way to do this, unfortunately. Sven Panne did a port of nhc's Binary library a while back, which you can find on haskell.org, but it will certainly need some work to get it going on recent GHC's. We'd really like a good serialisation library, BTW, if anyone out there feels like donating one! Cheers, Simon