saving and reloading variables for interactive work

[Darren Dale]

> 
> I've done some poking though, and there a better way than that.  It seems
> all picklable objects define a __reduce__ method, so you could generalize
> this check like this:
> 
>  def ispicklable(item):
>      try:
>         item.__reduce__()
>      except KeyError,TypeError:
>         return False
>      return True
> 

I think this may only be true for new-style classes, or objects that 
pickle "is unfamiliar with". I tried calling this method for strings, 
dicts, lists, and it complains that these are all unpicklable. 
object().__reduce__() does work though.

I'll give it some thought.