marshaling

Marshaling, or marshalling, is the act of organizing people, vehicles, or data into a planned order or form. The term appears in several domains, often implying coordination, arrangement, or transformation to a transmissible or usable state.

In transportation and logistics, marshaling refers to the assembling and rearranging of rolling stock into trains. Terminal yards called marshaling yards or classification yards perform sorting by destination. The process may involve decoupling and re-coupling cars and can be called shunting in some regions.

In computing and data processing, marshalling is the process of converting objects or data into a format suitable for transmission or storage, and for crossing process or machine boundaries. This includes serialization and preparation for remote calls (RPC, IPC). Unmarshalling is the reverse. Data formats vary from binary to text-based like JSON or XML; language environments (for example .NET, Java) provide marshaling facilities for cross-language calls.

Related uses include the organization of operations or resources by police, military, or federal agencies—e.g., marshaling troops or supplies for movement—also with the term marshals referring to officers (as in the U.S. Marshals Service). The concept can also apply to coordinating crowds at events or guiding participants through a planned sequence.