Gizmo wrote: > Hello > I am a relative newcomer to Python, and I am studying it to understand > its design. It intrigues me. > I recently studied Serialization of classes via the pickle/cPickle > library, and I have a question. > > Why is Serialization handled by a separate library (ie, pickle). Is it > possible, by design, to have serialization "internally" implemented via > an implicit ___serialize___ method? Ofcourse, you have to make this > method not overrideable (sp?). For example, the __repr__ method gives us > the string representation of a class... similarly, the __serialize__ > method would give us the "serial norm" representation of the class. > > This would allow me to do something like this, > conn.send(serial(myClass)); // or something like that?
Serialization is a complicated task. It needs at least a full module devoted to it just in terms of being able to implement it. Trying to stuff all of it into a builtin is asking for trouble. Of course, you can always do this: from cPickle import dumps ... conn.send(dumps(myClass)) -- Robert Kern "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
