Marshal vs pickle...

[Benjamin Peterson]

Lawson English <lenglish5 <at> cox.net> writes:

> 
> Marshalling is only briefly mentioned in most python books I have, and 
> "pickling" is declared teh preferred method for serialization.
> 
> I read somewhere that Marshalling is version-dependent while pickling is 
> not, but can't find that reference. OTOH, pickling can lead to loading 
> of malicious code (I understand) while marshalling only handles basic 
> Python types?

marshal isn't any more secure than pickle is.

> 
> Could anyone point me to a reasonable discussion of the pros and cons of 
> each method for serialization?

The Python developers can change the marshal format at will, so the only reason
I can think of you should use marshal is for serializing and unserializing data
during the runtime of your program.