title: method for serializing lua tables
body: <p>I may have missed this, but is there a built-in method for serializing/deserializing lua tables to text files and vice versa?  </p>
  
  <p>I had a pair of methods in place to do this on a lua table with fixed format (e.g. 3 columns of data with 5 rows).</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to do this on lua tables with any <strong>arbitrary</strong> format? </p>
  
  <p>For an example, given this lua table:</p>
  
  <pre><code>local scenes={
      {name="scnSplash",
          obj={
              {
                  name="bg",
                  type="background",
                  path="scnSplash_bg.png",
              },
              {
                  name="bird",
                  type="image",
                  path="scnSplash_bird.png",
                  x=0, 
                  y=682,
              },
          }
      },
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It would be converted into text like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{name="scnSplash",obj={{name="bg",type="background",path="scnSplash_bg.png",},{name="bird",  type="image",path="scnSplash_bird.png",x=0,y=682,}},}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The format of the serialized text can be defined in any way, as long as the text string can be deserialized into an empty lua table.</p>