Using pickletools.dis() to analyze serialized data.

🐍 pickle doesn't just store a snapshot of an object; it stores a sequence of instructions for its subsequent reconstruction.

Normally, we only see the result of serialization:

import pickle

payload = pickle.dumps(
    {"name": "Alex", "roles": ["admin", "user"]}
)

print(len(payload))

The standard library includes pickletools.dis(), which disassembles the pickle stream and shows its instructions in a readable format.

import pickletools

pickletools.dis(payload)

The output shows the creation of a dictionary, strings, a list, and the operations used to assemble the final object.

EMPTY_DICT
SHORT_BINUNICODE 'name'
SHORT_BINUNICODE 'Alex'
SHORT_BINUNICODE 'roles'
EMPTY_LIST

This is useful when debugging your own classes: you can check which global objects and reconstruction mechanisms are included in the serialization.

class User:
    def init(self, name):
        self.name = name

payload = pickle.dumps(User("Alex"))

pickletools.dis(payload)

For further analysis, there's pickletools.optimize(): it removes some unused operations from the pickle stream without changing the object being reconstructed.

optimized = pickletools.optimize(payload)

assert pickle.loads(optimized).name == "Alex"

⚠️ pickletools is designed for analyzing pickle streams, not for safely reading untrusted data. You should still not pass unknown pickle data to pickle.loads().

🔥 pickletools.dis() allows you to peek inside the serialization and see the instructions from which pickle reconstructs the object.

#Python #Pickle #DataScience #Debugging #Coding #DevTools

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