Marshal.load a string

I'm trying to deserialize a hash from a string:

names = '{foo:"bar"}'
@names_hash = Marshal开发者_StackOverflow社区.load(names)

but I get a TypeError:

TypeError: incompatible marshal file format (can't be read)
    format version 4.8 required; 123.111 given

According to the docs Marshal.load should accept a String. Why am I getting the error?

Here's the output of an IRB session:

irb(main):005:0> a = {"foo" => "bar"}
=> {"foo"=>"bar"}
irb(main):006:0> Marshal.dump(a)
=> "\004\b{\006\"\bfoo\"\bbar"

What you're doing looks more like JSON to me, than Marshaling.