title: ImportError: No module named _gdbm matplotlib pickle
body: <p>since matplotlib 1.3 matplotlib figures are pickle-able</p>
  
  <p>When I try an example found on stackoverflow:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  import numpy as np
  import pickle
  
  ax = plt.subplot(111)
  x = np.linspace(0, 10)
  y = np.exp(x)
  plt.plot(x, y)
  pickle.dump(ax, file('myplot.pickle', 'w'))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Source: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7290370/store-and-reload-matplotlib-pyplot-object">Store and reload matplotlib.pyplot object</a></p>
  
  <p>I get the following error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "D:/Work/Programming/Experimental/picklematplotlib/main.py", line 15, in &lt;module&gt;
      pickle.dump(ax, file)
    File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\six.py", line 116, in __getattr__
      _module = self._resolve()
    File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\six.py", line 105, in _resolve
      return _import_module(self.mod)
    File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\six.py", line 76, in _import_module
      __import__(name)
    File "C:\Python32\lib\dbm\gnu.py", line 3, in &lt;module&gt;
      from _gdbm import *
  ImportError: No module named _gdbm
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am using matplotlib-1.3.1.win-amd64.py3.2.exe version of matplotlib
  together with python3.2 on an 64bit windows machine</p>
  
  <p>according to: <a href="http://docs.python.org/2/library/gdbm.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://docs.python.org/2/library/gdbm.html</a> gdbm is named dbm.gnu in python3.
  so is it a software bug in matplotlib or what could I do to make it working.</p>
  
  <p>surprisingly the .pickle file is created and useable.
  this means, the program crashes directly after writing the .pickle file</p>