Understanding Pickling in Python

Question

I have recently got an assignment where I need to put a dictionary (where each key refers to a list) in pickled form. The only problem is I have no idea what pickled form is

Answer 1

http://docs.python.org/library/pickle.html#example

import pickle

data1 = {'a': [1, 2.0, 3, 4+6j],
         'b': ('string', u'Unicode string'),
         'c': None}

selfref_list = [1, 2, 3]
selfref_list.append(selfref_list)

output = open('data.pkl', 'wb')

# Pickle dictionary using protocol 0.
pickle.dump(data1, output)

# Pickle the list using the highest protocol available.
pickle.dump(selfref_list, output, -1)

output.close()