Why is the concept of Marshalling called as such?

Question

I've always thought that the concept of Marshalling had a bit of a funny name.

My mental conception of the process would always involve an ol' wildwest gunslinging marshall who would coerce objects into serialized form at gunpoint.

I just found out the real reason Marshalling is called what it's called and chuckled.

(edit) Ok - this is what I came across on wikipedia:

Data marshalling is so named because it was first studied in 1962 by Edward Waite Marshall, then with the General Electric corporation.

Did you know the real reason, or perhaps you too are familiar with my gunslinger?

Answer 1

A marshal is a something/someone who controls flow or probably more precisely - controls structure (see comments below). For example at a racing event you get track marshalls. (I know that's real world and sport and so may not be appeal to many here).

If data being transferred across a boundary then I think controlling that flow is very aptly described as marshalling. I think your idea of marshalling is another good example of this term used correctly. I do think that using an existing term should be de rigueur as opposed to creating new jargon.

Answer 2

Your imagine of "Marshalling" is like mine is. it's like a person from an old wild west film where the main actor is played by John Wayne. And it's so a perfect picture of what the software actually does: you will set to prison if you do some silly things in your program

Answer 3

A footnote in the docs for the python marshal module says the following:

The name of this module stems from a bit of terminology used by the designers of Modula-3 (amongst others), who use the term ``marshalling'' for shipping of data around in a self-contained form.

Answer 4

It's more like the "grand marshal" of a parade or the "marshalling grounds" for a parade. That makes sure that everything goes out in the right order even if they don't arrive in the right order. Thinking of my strings as chimpanzees in little cars makes interop a little more fun for me :-)