It’s easy enough to load .mat files in Python via the scipy.io.loadmat function. But what about loading .pickle files into Matlab? That’s easy enough by calling a system command in Matlab, like so:

function [a] = loadpickle(filename)
    if ~exist(filename,'file')
        error('%s is not a file',filename);
    end
    outname = [tempname() '.mat'];
    pyscript = ['import cPickle as pickle;import sys;import scipy.io;file=open("' filename '","r");dat=pickle.load(file);file.close();scipy.io.savemat("' outname '",dat)'];
    system(['LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/intel/composer_xe_2013/mkl/lib/intel64:/opt/intel/composer_xe_2013/lib/intel64;python -c ''' pyscript '''']);
    a = load(outname);
end

Note that I’m setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable since Matlab seems to reset this variable internally and it causes .so module import errors in Python.