If you think quoted expression is human-readable. Try to use:

• quote
• Code.eval_quoted

Or, just use :erlang.term_to_binary and :erlang.binary_to_term. When you want to inspect it, use something like following code instead of reading it directly.

File.read!("path/to/file")
|> :erlang.binary_to_term()
|> IO.inspect()

I think it is better to tell us your scenario. It’s an XY problem probably.

A bit of info will be helpful. The way to handle (most) terms in a human readable way is to use inspect to dump the data to disk, and then Code.eval_string to turn it back into a value. However this has a variety of trade offs and won’t handle arbitrary terms because things like pid values for example don’t have an output from inspect that will turn back into a pid when evaled. Whether that matters or not depends on your use case.

Hey @nhpip did you try inspect/1 ?

i_am_a_term_now_a_string = inspect(term, limit: :infinity)