Save variables to file at runtime

Question

I'm looking for some functionality in Julia comparable to Matlab's

save('myfile.mat', 'myvar1', 'myvar2')

For example, using HDF5.jl, it is easy to do

@write filename myvar1 myvar2

But this requires that I know exactly which variables I want to write to the file.

I'd like to be able to choose which variables to write at run time, in a function scope, and specify their names using symbols or strings.

vars = [:myvar1, :myvar2]
@write filename vars

What would be the best way to accomplish this?

EDIT

I know that I can use save from JLD.jl as save("file.jld", "myvar1", myvar1). But I want to be able to save a list of variables that are not known at compile time, allowing a single call to save (or similar):

if condition
    myvar1 = 1
    vars = [:myvar1]
else
    myvar1 = 1
    myvar2 = 2
    vars = [:myvar1, :myvar2]
end

# what goes here?
save(filename, vars...)

Answer 1

You may want to take a look at the JLD package, which builds on HDF5 with better support of user-defined Julia types. Both HDF5 and JLD provide functions for save that take run-time names for variables.

Answer 2

You can use serialize and deserialize:

vars = Dict()
if condition
   myvar = 1
   vars[:myvar1] = myvar1
else
   myvar1 = 1
   myvar2 = 2
   vars[:myvar1] = myvar1
   vars[:myvar2] = myvar2
end

f = open( filename, "w" )
serialize( f, vars )
close( f )

to read:

f = open( filename, "r" )
vars = deserialize( f )
close( f )

if you don't need to save variable names you can use array instead of dict: vars = []