Why do I get "Pickle - EOFError: Ran out of input" reading an empty file?

Question

I am getting an interesting error while trying to use Unpickler.load(), here is the source code:

open(target, 'a').close()
scores = {};
with open(target, "rb") as file:
    unpickler = pickle.Unpickler(file);
    scores = unpickler.load();
    if not isinstance(scores, dict):
        scores = {};

Here is the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "G:\python\pendu\user_test.py", line 3, in <module>:
    save_user_points("Magix", 30);
File "G:\python\pendu\user.py", line 22, in save_user_points:
    scores = unpickler.load();
EOFError: Ran out of input

The file I am trying to read is empty. How can I avoid getting this error, and get an empty variable instead?

Answer 1

Most of the answers here have dealt with how to mange EOFError exceptions, which is really handy if you're unsure about whether the pickled object is empty or not.

However, if you're surprised that the pickle file is empty, it could be because you opened the filename through 'wb' or some other mode that could have over-written the file.

for example:

filename = 'cd.pkl'
with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
    classification_dict = pickle.load(f)

This will over-write the pickled file. You might have done this by mistake before using:

...
open(filename, 'rb') as f:

And then got the EOFError because the previous block of code over-wrote the cd.pkl file.

When working in Jupyter, or in the console (Spyder) I usually write a wrapper over the reading/writing code, and call the wrapper subsequently. This avoids common read-write mistakes, and saves a bit of time if you're going to be reading the same file multiple times through your travails