With Python, can I keep a persistent dictionary and modify it?

Question

So, I want to store a dictionary in a persistent file. Is there a way to use regular dictionary methods to add, print, or delete entries from the dictionary in that file?

Answer 1

pickling has one disadvantage. it can be expensive if your dictionary has to be read and written frequently from disk and it's large. pickle dumps the stuff down (whole). unpickle gets the stuff up (as a whole).

if you have to handle small dicts, pickle is ok. If you are going to work with something more complex, go for berkelydb. It is basically made to store key:value pairs.