.NET binary serialization between 32-bit and 64-bit OS

Question

I have a program that saves data to hard drive using binary serialization. If I recompile the program on a 64-bit machine, can it deserialize the data from 32-bit machine?

Answer 1

Yes, the only type that could break is IntPtr but you shouldn't serialize fields of this type anyways.

Answer 2

Almost all .NET data types are defined in their byte counts (with the exception of IntPtr which differs depending on your target architecture). So serializing any .NET object will create the same size serialization of that object regardless of your architecture. No special work is needed on your part, fortunately. Good luck!

Answer 3

Here is the relevant article in MSDN:

Migrating 32-bit Managed Code to 64-bit: Migration and Serialization