List to Text back to List

Chris Rebert clp at rebertia.com
Thu Nov 6 15:33:41 EST 2008


On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 12:18 PM, SimonPalmer <simon.palmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 6, 8:11 pm, "Chris Rebert" <c... at rebertia.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 12:04 PM, SimonPalmer <simon.pal... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi, I am looking for a way to convert a List of floating point numbers
>> > to and from text.  I am embedding it in an XML document and am looking
>> > for a neat way to serialise and de-serialise a list from a text node.
>> > I can easily write something to do it manually but I wondered whether
>> > List had native support to go to and from text.
>>
>> > If not List, are there any other collections/arrays that do this?
>>
>> It's not really a matter of the collection, but more a matter of
>> serialization format/library.
>>
>> If you want the serialized representation to be human-readable, use
>> JSON (http://docs.python.org/library/json.html#module-json).
>> If that's not a requirement, use pickle
>> (http://docs.python.org/library/pickle.html#module-pickle).
>> Both modules can convert simple Python data, such as your list of
>> floats, to a bytestream and back again.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>> --
>> Follow the path of the Iguana...http://rebertia.com
>>
>>
>>
>> > TIA
>> > Simon
>> > --
>> >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>>
>>
>
> I looked at pickle, but the problem is that I want my XML to be
> readable by languages other than python, so it sort of precludes it.
> JSON would be perfect, but I think the module only exists in 2.6, is
> that right?  Unfortunately I am bound to 2.4.
>
> It is looking more and more like I am going to have to roll my own.

The module is available as a third-party library for previous Python
versions at http://www.undefined.org/python/

Cheers,
Chris
-- 
Follow the path of the Iguana...
http://rebertia.com



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