Pickle alternatives

Question

I am trying to serialize a large (~10**6 rows, each with ~20 values) list, to be used later by myself (so pickle\'s lack of safety isn\'t a concern).

Each row of the lis

Answer 1

I usually serialize to plain text (*.csv) because I found it to be fastest. The csv module works quite well. See http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html

If you have to deal with unicode for your strings, check out the UnicodeReader and UnicodeWriter examples at the end.

If you serialize for your own future use, I guess it would suffice to know that you have the same data type per csv column (e.g., string are always on column 2).