[SOLVED] How to convert string representation of list to a list?

Issue

I was wondering what the simplest way is to convert a string representation of a list like the following to a list:

x = '[ "A","B","C" , " D"]'

Even in cases where the user puts spaces in between the commas, and spaces inside of the quotes, I need to handle that as well and convert it to:

x = ["A", "B", "C", "D"] 

I know I can strip spaces with strip() and split() and check for non-letter characters. But the code was getting very kludgy. Is there a quick function that I’m not aware of?

Solution

>>> import ast
>>> x = '[ "A","B","C" , " D"]'
>>> x = ast.literal_eval(x)
>>> x
['A', 'B', 'C', ' D']
>>> x = [n.strip() for n in x]
>>> x
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']

ast.literal_eval:

With ast.literal_eval you can safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python literal or container display. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, bytes, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None.

Answered By – Roger Pate

Answer Checked By – Clifford M. (BugsFixing Volunteer)