I'm using binary serialization (BinaryFormatter) as a temporary mechanism to store state information in a file for a relatively complex (game) object structure; the files are coming out much larger than I expect, and my data structure includes recursive references - so I'm wondering whether the BinaryFormatter is actually storing multiple copies of the same objects, or whether my basic "number of objects and values I should have" arithmentic is way off-base, or where else the excessive size is coming from.

Searching on stack overflow I was able to find the specification for Microsoft's binary remoting format: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc236844(PROT.10).aspx

What I can't find is any existing viewer that enables you to "peek" into the contents of a binaryformatter output file - get object counts and total bytes for different object types in the file, etc;

I feel like this must be my "google-fu" failing me (what little I have) - can anyone help? This must have been done before, right??