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marshal.dump yields error when temporary file is given as a second argument.
import tempfile
import marshal
tmpfile = tempfile.TemporaryFile(mode='w+b')
# TypeError: marshal.dump() 2nd arg must be file
marshal.dump({}, tmpfile)

I can't reproduce this issue (on linux).
Are you sure you've necessary rights to write to tempdir ?

I'm seeing this on Windows with Python 2.7.6 (amd64). I can write to the
same file with other methods.
On 17 November 2013 18:36, Gregory Salvan <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
>
> Gregory Salvan added the comment:
>
> I can't reproduce this issue (on linux).
> Are you sure you've necessary rights to write to tempdir ?
>
> ----------
> nosy: +Gregory.Salvan
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue19630>
> _______________________________________
>

Sorry I don't have windows to test.
Try to set the temporary directory to a path you're sure you've rights, either by setting tempfile.tempdir (http://docs.python.org/2/library/tempfile.html#tempfile.tempdir) or by adding the argument dir="C:\\user\path" in tempfile.TemporaryFile function.
Otherwise I can't help you.
Maybe you should show us the result of tempfile.gettempdir().

marshal.c does a check that the 2nd arg is a subclass of the builtin file class. On non-Posix platforms, TemporaryFile is a wrapper class providing context manager support for delete-on-close. This fails the subclass test.
The docs for TemporaryFile:
http://docs.python.org/2/library/tempfile.html?highlight=temporaryfile#tempfile.TemporaryFile
do state that, on non-Posix systems, the object is not a true file. The docs for marshal:
http://docs.python.org/2/library/marshal.html?highlight=marshal#marshal.dump
more or less state the 2nd param must be a true file object. So I think we're within rights here. But I accept that it's not an ideal. The best we can opt for here, I think, is a doc patch to marshal.dump reinforcing that the file must a true file.
BTW, why are you marshalling into a file which will be deleted as soon as it's closed?

Thank you for detailed explanation. Too bad tempfile is inherently
non-portable, but I'm fine with marshal.dumps as a w/a in this case.
I marshal to a temporary file to serialize input for Perforce command line
client which is capable of accepting marshaled Python objects as input for
some commands. Unfortunately writing directly to its stdin deadlocks (at
least on Windows, where streams seems not be fully buffered). My guess is
that Perforce client performs seek to end of file before reading it.

I cannot reproduce the issue on Python 3 (on Linux), I suppose that it is specific to Python 2.
On Python 3, mashal.dump(obj, fileobj) only calls fileobj.write(data), no test on fileobj type is done.

New changeset 0f6bdc2b0e38 by Tim Golden in branch '2.7':
Issue #19630 Emphasise that the file parameter to marshal.dump must be a real file object
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/0f6bdc2b0e38 

I updated the docs to emphasise that the file parameter to marshal.dump must be a real file, not a wrapper.