Removing outer quotes from list encoded as string in python

Question

I am doing some data cleaning from a file I read with pandas. I will illustrate the problem I have with a simple example.

I have the following string:

a = '["1","2","3"]'

And I would like to turn it into a list. Therefore, I need to get rid of the outer quotes.

Final result should be:

a = ["1","2","3"]

So that I can access the list using indexes.

Thanks in advance!

Didn't find that post before. Thanks :) – Mar 26 '16 at 11:32 — , Mar 26 '16 at 11:32

score -2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '16 at 11:30

-2

You can make a workaround using list comprehension like :

>>> [x.strip('\"') for x in a.strip("[]").split(",")]
['1', '2', '3']

answered Mar 26 '16 at 11:30

shaktimaan

you can simply do: ```output_list = json.loads(input_string)``` just by using json module. – Amandeep Singh Feb 03 '22 at 14:20

1 Answers1