Python – Pickle

Python pickle module is used for serializing and deserializing the object stream.

The pickle module consist of two major operation :-

Pickling ---------> conversion of object stream into byte stream

Unpickling -----> reverse of pickling , byte stream into object stream.

Once the object stream is converted into byte stream , the pickle file has all the necessary information reinstate the earlier state.

When to use pickle ?

1.) when we need the data to be persisted on the disk and to use it on the later stage of the program.

2.) when we need to send the data over the network protocol like TCP connection.

3.)pickling is normally used in Machine learning algorithm where we need the same data set to prediction at later stage .

Limitation of pickle :- The major disadvantage of pickle module is that it is programming language dependent and this module can work well only with Python.

Difference between pickle and JSON :- The pickle module is often comapre to the JSON but there are significant difference between pickle and JSON.

• JSON is human readable while pickle is not human readable.
• JSON file can work across different platform and is compatible with different programming language while pickle is python specific.
• JSON is text serialization format while pickle is binary serialization format.

Code Snippet :-

Created on Sat Mar 2 23:11:30 2019

@author: sangam

"""

import pickle

data_to_be_pickle = ['tad','five','kyle','Ram']

dump_filename = 'file_pickle'

outfile = open(dump_filename,'wb')

data_to_be_dumped = pickle.dump(data_to_be_pickle,outfile)

outfile.close()

infile = open(dump_filename,'rb')

data_to_be_unpickle = pickle.load(infile)

print(data_to_be_unpickle)