Functions for saving and loading python objects using pickle with gzip compression.

gzip_pickle.py

import pickle
import gzip

def save(object, filename, protocol = 0):
        """Saves a compressed object to disk
        """
        file = gzip.GzipFile(filename, 'wb')
        file.write(pickle.dumps(object, protocol))
        file.close()

def load(filename):
        """Loads a compressed object from disk
        """
        file = gzip.GzipFile(filename, 'rb')
        buffer = ""
        while True:
                data = file.read()
                if data == "":
                        break
                buffer += data
        object = pickle.loads(buffer)
        file.close()
        return object

Failing on Python:3.6

TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
/test.py in <module>()
     37 filename = 'machine.pickle'
     38 save(machine, filename)
---> 39 m = load(filename)
     40 print(m.y)

/test.py in load(filename)
     30                 if data == "":
     31                         break
---> 32                 buffer += data
     33         object = pickle.loads(buffer)
     34         file.close()
TypeError: must be str, not bytes 

Tested with the following code

filename = 'machine.pickle'
machine = dict(name="testing dict")
save(machine, filename)
m = load(filename) 

def load(filename):
        """Loads a compressed object from disk
        """
        file = gzip.GzipFile(filename, 'rb')
        # buffer = ""
        # while True:
        #         data = file.read()
        #         if data == "":
        #                 break
        #         buffer += data
        # object = pickle.loads(buffer)
        data = file.read()
        object = pickle.loads(data)
        file.close()
        return object