This is a Python module that is be able to read Perl storable files. Storable is a nice and efficient binary format for Perl that is very popular. A lot of other serialization/deserialization modules exist that are even more or less standardized: JSON, XML, CSV,.. etc. Storable is more or less Perl specific.
To ease integration between Perl - where storable sometimes is the only option - and Python this module is a bridge.
This module will not be efficient in memory usage nor cpu usage. All data, stringified objects and data types are kept in memory prior to the end result being written out to disk if requested.
The module has been tested to work with Python 2.7 and upwards.
Warning
Perl Scalar Handling
Care has to be taken when dealing with Perl "scalars". They are a bit "magical" in that they can behave like different types depending on how they are used. This is currently not supported directly in Python, and neither does this library provide a suitable abstraction!
The way this is currently handled is that types are "guessed" in a fairly iffy manner! The value is tried to be converted to different types (at the time of this writing: float → int → ASCII-string). The first one that matches wins. This means that The Perl scalar "123" will always be returned as an integer
from storable import retrieve
data = retrieve('/path/to/file.storable')
from storable import freeze
# only works (so far) for JSON-able types and recursion-limited depth
# This will not serialize to the exact same object in perl as retrieve/thaw-ing
# but will be readable by perl to load json-like values
serialized_bytes = freeze({'x': 'bar', 'y': 1, 'z': 1.23, 'w':[], 'v':[1,2,3]})