[Python-Dev] The memo of pickle

[Greg Ewing]

Guido:
> Me:
> > That would break a lot of programs that use pickle
> > without opening the file in binary mode.
> 
> Really?  That's unfortunate.

Unfortunate, yes, and true, as far as I can see. It bit me recently --
I decided to change something to use binary pickling, and forgot to
change the way I was opening the file.

If you must do this, I suppose you could start issuing warnings
if pickling is done without specifying a mode, and then change
the default later.

If there's a way of making non-binary unpickling dramatically
faster, though -- even if only with cPickle -- that would be a 
*big* win, and shouldn't cause any compatibity problems.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
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