Some good points. Take the code for what it's worth… not appropriate for every single possible scenario I guess.

var stringify_string = function(str) {
str = str.replace(/\\/g, "\\\\");
str = str.replace(/\"/g, "\\\"");
return "\""+str+"\"";
};

The code you provide also, when evaluated, creates an object that is not of the right type. You can get around this in some situations on firefox by setting the __proto__ property - but that's only if you have a name that it should be set to.

Other problems with general usage are loops, or equivalent objects. If an object or its descendant contains a reference to itself, this method will loop forever. Equal objects is a pain as well - if there are two references to the same object, when you deserialise, they will no longer be equal to each other. You can fix using something like this:

{bob: (tmp={key: 1}), alf: tmp}

When that is evaluated, you end up with a bob and alf being === each other. Of course, other object literal notation parsers may not cope with that, and you have set a global there.

Fixing loops is a real pain - you need to keep a list of all objects that you've dealt with so far, and use references to them if they are the same as an earlier one.

to do so in IE7 you have to save the anonymous function into another global var
and then later detach it using that var

The Government of The Peoples Republic of China has unanimously
endorsed McCain/Palin for President of the United States.

"They are our kind of leaders!" says a Government spokesperson.
"They understand that business and the government should be in control,
not the silly workers, or 'people' as they sometimes call themselves.
Also, we understand the Republic concept. It is Democracy we find
distasteful."

A leading General, who wished to remain anonymous, had this to say
about President McCain: "We planted many post-hypnotic suggestions
in our former P.O.W.'s mind and we are beside ourselves with
anticipation at having the opportunity to trigger them and have control
of the white house without even having to wage a war…"

"And if that fails," a second anonymous official pipes in "it's not like
George W. Bush did not already sell it to us anyway."

P.S. We sure hope that Sarah Palin and her corrupt comrade Ted Stevens dream of a free Alaska comes true someday so we can do serious business.

very nice and useful code and exactly, what I'm looking for! Thanks a lot for contributing.

As Jarek mentioned before, there are problems with the correct detection of Arrays. My suggestion for solving this is using the property length which does not exist in Object().
So my piece of code looks like:
if (theObj.constructor === Array
|| theObj.length
|| typeof(theObj.callee) !== 'undefined')

Regards from munich,

Oliver