[Mailman-Developers] Re: Why both a .msg and .db in qfiles?

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JRM" == Jason R Mastaler <jason@mastaler.com> writes:

    >> See METADATA_FORMAT in Defaults.py/mm_cfg.py for the storage
    >> format for the metadata dictionary (I was mistaken that it's
    >> always a pickle, in fact it's usually a marshal

    JRM> And why use a marshal instead of a pickle?  Better
    JRM> performance?

For something as simple as a dictionary (which the metadata is), I
believe so.  I did some benchmarking quite a while back, but don't
remember the details.  Note though that marshals are easier to break
in odd ways -- they're basically a tool too support .pycs so were
never terribly robust.  Pickles generally better for object trees too,
especially if you might have cycles.  OTOH, binary fast pickles for
simple data structures might perform equally well.

-Barry