Where is dumped file in Google Colab?

Question

When I wrote this code in google colab:

import pickle
x=10;
output = open('data.pkl', 'wb')
pickle.dump(x,output)

x is saved and also in another window in Google Colab I can access this file and read it but I don't know where is the file. Does anybody know where is it?

Answer 1

It’s in the current directory. You can also download it back to your local machine with

from google.colab import files
files.download(‘data.pkl’)

Answer 2

You can upload it to your Google drive:

from pydrive.auth import GoogleAuth
from pydrive.drive import GoogleDrive
from google.colab import auth
from oauth2client.client import GoogleCredentials

# 1. Authenticate and create the PyDrive client.
auth.authenticate_user()
gauth = GoogleAuth()
gauth.credentials = GoogleCredentials.get_application_default()
drive = GoogleDrive(gauth)  

# get the folder id where you want to save your file
file = drive.CreateFile({'parents':[{u'id': folder_id}]})
file.SetContentFile('data.pkl')
file.Upload() 

This code basically fetches the data.pkl from the cloud VM and upload it permanently to your Google Drive under a specific folder.

If you choose not to specify a folder, the file will be uploaded under the root of your Google Drive.