pickle vs .pyc

[Gordon McMillan]

Michael Vezie writes:
[saving / loading complex structures]
> The obvious choice is, of course pickle, or some flavor thereof. But
> can someone tell me why this wouldn't be faster:
> 
> In the code that does the "pickling", simply do:
> f = open("cache.py", "w")
> f.write("# cache file for fast,slow\n")
> f.write("fast = "+`fast`+'\n')
> f.write("slow = "+`slow'+'\n')
> f.close()
> import cache
> 
> Then, later, when I want the data, I just do:
> 
> from cache import fast,slow

> Am I missing something here?  This sounds like an obvious, and fast,
> way to do things.  True, the caching part may take longer.  But I
> really don't care about that, since it's done only once, and in the
> background.  

Not at all. Where x == eval(repr(x)), this is dandy. You can even use 
pprint to dump into a humanly digestible format. You can then edit 
and reload.

But marshall should be even faster.

- Gordon