13. pickletools — Tools for pickle developers

New in version 2.3.

Source code: :source:`Lib/pickletools.py`

This module contains various constants relating to the intimate details of the pickle module, some lengthy comments about the implementation, and a few useful functions for analyzing pickled data. The contents of this module are useful for Python core developers who are working on the pickle and cPickle implementations; ordinary users of the pickle module probably won’t find the pickletools module relevant.

pickletools.dis(pickle, out=None, memo=None, indentlevel=4)[source]

Outputs a symbolic disassembly of the pickle to the file-like object out, defaulting to sys.stdout. pickle can be a string or a file-like object. memo can be a Python dictionary that will be used as the pickle’s memo; it can be used to perform disassemblies across multiple pickles created by the same pickler. Successive levels, indicated by MARK opcodes in the stream, are indented by indentlevel spaces.

pickletools.genops(pickle)[source]

Provides an iterator over all of the opcodes in a pickle, returning a sequence of (opcode, arg, pos) triples. opcode is an instance of an OpcodeInfo class; arg is the decoded value, as a Python object, of the opcode’s argument; pos is the position at which this opcode is located. pickle can be a string or a file-like object.

pickletools.optimize(picklestring)[source]

Returns a new equivalent pickle string after eliminating unused PUT opcodes. The optimized pickle is shorter, takes less transmission time, requires less storage space, and unpickles more efficiently.

New in version 2.6.