easy save/load of data in python

Question

What is the easiest way to save and load data in python, preferably in a human-readable output format?

The data I am saving/loading consists of two vectors of floats

Answer 1

Since we're talking about a human editing the file, I assume we're talking about relatively little data.

How about the following skeleton implementation. It simply saves the data as key=value pairs and works with lists, tuples and many other things.

    def save(fname, **kwargs):
      f = open(fname, "wt")
      for k, v in kwargs.items():
        print >>f, "%s=%s" % (k, repr(v))
      f.close()

    def load(fname):
      ret = {}
      for line in open(fname, "rt"):
        k, v = line.strip().split("=", 1)
        ret[k] = eval(v)
      return ret

    x = [1, 2, 3]
    y = [2.0, 1e15, -10.3]
    save("data.txt", x=x, y=y)
    d = load("data.txt")
    print d["x"]
    print d["y"]