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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T09:12:58+00:00

Looking for advice on the best technique for saving complex Python data structures across

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Looking for advice on the best technique for saving complex Python data structures across program sessions.

Here’s a list of techniques I’ve come up with so far:

  • pickle/cpickle
  • json
  • jsonpickle
  • xml
  • database (like SQLite)

Pickle is the easiest and fastest technique, but my understanding is that there is no guarantee that pickle output will work across various versions of Python 2.x/3.x or across 32 and 64 bit implementations of Python.

Json only works for simple data structures. Jsonpickle seems to correct this AND seems to be written to work across different versions of Python.

Serializing to XML or to a database is possible, but represents extra effort since we would have to do the serialization ourselves manually.

Thank you,
Malcolm

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You have a misconception about pickles: they are guaranteed to work across Python versions. You simply have to choose a protocol version that is supported by all the Python versions you care about.

    The technique you left out is marshal, which is not guaranteed to work across Python versions (and btw, is how .pyc files are written).

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