[issue6477] Pickling of NoneType raises PicklingError

[Alexander Belopolsky]

Alexander Belopolsky <belopolsky at users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:

Ellipsis and NotImplemented are different from None because they are not pickleable themselves.  The None situation is more similar to that of say module level functions:


>>> def f(): pass
... 
>>> dumps(f)  # works
b'\x80\x03c__main__\nf\nq\x00.'
>>> dumps(type(f))  # does not work
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ..
_pickle.PicklingError: Can't pickle <class 'function'>: attribute lookup builtins.function failed


I think documentation at http://docs.python.org/dev/py3k/library/pickle.html#what-can-be-pickled-and-unpickled

Can be improved in two ways:

1. s/types/objects/ in "The following types can be pickled"

2. Add a note that "type(x) can be pickled" does not follow from "x can be pickled."  The object type(x) must itself fall into one on the listed categories.

3. "built-in functions defined at the top level of a module" should probably be "built-in classes or functions defined at the top level of the builtins module"

4. "instances of such classes" should be "instances of picklable classes"

5. "__setstate__() is picklable" should be "output of __getstate__() is picklable"

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nosy: +belopolsky

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue6477>
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