Daniel Watkins wrote:
> Currently, I'm writing a little project which needs to store a
> dictionary in an external file (so it can be accessed by another
> program). However, no matter how much I try, I cannot get Python to
> import the dictionary from the file properly. However, I know the
> problem. Whatever format I put the data in within the file (either as a
> dictionary or a list of tuples to 'dict()') Python reads it as a string,
> rather than a dictionary or list of tuples.
If you are trying to share a dict between two Python programs, the simplest way
is to use the pickle module.
To write a dict to a pickle is as simple as
>>> import pickle
>>> data = {'a':1, 'b':2}
>>> f=open('data.txt', 'wb')
>>> pickle.dump(data, f)
>>> f.close()
The output is not particularly human-readable; in this case data.txt contains
(dp0
S'a'
p1
I1
sS'b'
p2
I2
s.
but that doesn't really matter; to read it back, use pickle again:
>>> f=open('data.txt', 'rb')
>>> newData = pickle.load(f)
>>> newData
{'a': 1, 'b': 2}
>>> f.close()
Kent
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