Python, in Greek mythology, a huge serpent. In some myths the infant Apollo slew Python at the oracle of Gaea in Delphi; in others Apollo killed the serpent in order to claim the oracle for himself. The Pythian games celebrated the victory of Apollo over Python.

Any of 28 species (family Pythonidae, sometimes a subfamily of Boidae) of sluggish, docile, nonvenomous snakes found in tropical and temperate regions. Except for one Central American species (Loxocemus bicolor), pythons are found from western Africa to China, Australia, and the Pacific islands. Pythons feed on birds and mammals, killing them by constriction. Most are found near water; some are arboreal. Unlike boas, pythons lay eggs (15–100, depending on body size). The Asian reticulated python (Python reticulatus) may be the world's longest snake (the anaconda is heavier); specimens over 30 ft (9 m) long have been recorded.

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pickle is the standard python mechanism for object serialization; pickling is the common term among python programmer for serialization (unpickling for deserializing). Pickle uses a simple stack-based "virtual machine" that records the "instructions" used to reconstruct the object. This makes pickle vulnerable to security risks by malformed or maliciously constructed data, that may cause the deserializer to import arbitrary modules and instantiate any object. Also, not all objects can be pickled, especially ones that hold operating system resources like file handles.

Pickle was originally implemented as the pure-python pickle module, but the cPickle module (also a built-in) offers improved performance (up to 1000 times faster).

References

External links

• Official module documentation
• Python persistence management