Pickle, __init__, and classes

[Yin]

I've created a class that reads in and processes a file in the
initializer __init__.  The processing is fairly substantial, and thus,
instead of processing the file every time the object is created, I
pickle the object to a file.

In subsequent creations of the object, I implement a test to see
whether the pickled file exists.  If it does, then I unpickle the
object.

Unfortunately, the __init__ cannot return this unpickled object.

I've used an auxiliary member function which fixes the problem, but I
would prefer to have the correct object returned at instantiation
rather than returned from the auxiliary member function.

Are there other ways of approaching this problem?

Thanks,
Yin