# Save and load data for interactive analysis (why is JLD2 @load "deprecated"?)

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/save-and-load-data-for-interactive-analysis-why-is-jld2-load-deprecated/133352>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [October 22, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/save-and-load-data-for-interactive-analysis-why-is-jld2-load-deprecated/133352 "2025-10-22T02:00:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mjmat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mjmat](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mjmat)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/save-and-load-data-for-interactive-analysis-why-is-jld2-load-deprecated/133352/1 "2025-10-22T02:00:31Z")

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During interactive data analysis, I sometimes want to save some variables to disk, and then load them again later to continue. For what I want to do, this works perfectly (using JLD2):

```julia
# Do first part of analysis
jldsave("part1.jld2"; var1, var2, var3)
# Perhaps in another file do some other analysis
jldsave("part2.jld2"; var4)
# Etc.
# In another file, load all results from part1 and part2
@load "part1.jld2"
@load "part2.jld2"

```

For my use case, `@load` is very convenient, more convenient than having to list all variables I want to read as indicated in JLD2 documentation with a combination of `jldopen` and `read`.  
It is also more convenient than getting all variables in a Dict with `load`.  
The problem is that the JLD2 documentation lists `@load` in the [Legacy](https://juliaio.github.io/JLD2.jl/dev/legacy/) section, which I interpret as “deprecated” (so, for me trying to learn, it is interpreted as “don’t bother, this might not even work anymore in the future”).

The doc says `@load` and `@save` “unnecessarily introduce new macro-based syntax”, but I cannot find how to get the same results differently, so I struggle to understand why it is “unnecessary”.

Is there another way to get all variables in a JLD2 file (as variables, not in a Dict) without having to list them one-by-one?  
This seems to have been discussed before, but I have only found rather old answers so I thought it would be better to ask again.

For completeness, I thought about a workaround by getting a Dict and dumping all keys as variables with their values, which is explained [here](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/export-dictionary-keys-as-variables/19968), but that is also a quite old thread and it certainly doesn’t seem “cleaner” than using `@load`.

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**Author:** ![JonasIsensee](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jonasisensee/32/4704_2.png) [@JonasIsensee](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/JonasIsensee)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 7:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/save-and-load-data-for-interactive-analysis-why-is-jld2-load-deprecated/133352/2 "2025-10-22T07:59:48Z")

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Hi @mjmat ,

I understand that `@load "file.jld2"` can be very useful for you here.  
The issue that I have with this is that it is brittle:

- The file has to be available at “parse time” → JLD2 will try to load the file while trying to expand the macro in order to find all the required variable names
- The macro will try to create or overwrite variables in your session, depending on what is in the file, which makes it difficult to reason about.
- It cannot work in package code
- The provided file name has to be a string literal. (So the file can be opened at parse time)

Short answer: No, there is no other recommended way because I don’t think it is a good idea to do this in the first place.  
I moved it to _Legacy_ because I don’t want to promote its usage. It is unlikely that it will be removed entirely any time soon.

Of course, I also have _similar_ requirements at work sometimes. This is how I do it:

```julia-auto
# compute code with output var1 var2, var3
computedata = (; var1, var2, var3)
jldsave("part1.jld2"; computedata)

##
data = load("part1.jld2")
# Either use computedata.var1 or use:
(; var1, var2, var3) = data
# Or if analysis is wrapped into a function:
function analysisfun(; var1, var2, var3)
      # like so
end

analysisfun(; data...)

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mjmat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mjmat](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mjmat)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 9:17am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/save-and-load-data-for-interactive-analysis-why-is-jld2-load-deprecated/133352/3 "2025-10-22T09:17:51Z")

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Thank you for taking the time to provide a detailed answer.  
I understand that `@load` is not a good idea, but sometimes it is useful so I am glad it’s not going away “too soon”.  
And I will try to use the method you suggest, putting everything in a named tuple is a neat trick, I really like your suggestion to use `computedata.var1` etc in your solution. Thanks again!