How to convert sublist to list

Question

I am having the list like this below,

[
    'August 28, 2017',
    'gilbert arizona',
    '33.3528264',
    '-111.789027',
    '1236 Feet',
    "[u'  ASCE 7* Ground Snow LoadElevation 2,000 feet', u' Ground Snow Load is0 psf']"
]

I want convert this to the form

[
    'August 28, 2017',
    'gilbert arizona',
    '33.3528264',
    '-111.789027',
    '1236 Feet',
    'ASCE 7* Ground Snow LoadElevation 2,000 feet',
    ' Ground Snow Load is0 psf'
]

Lookup: XY Problem. You don't have a sublist, you have a string, which is a `str(list_object)`. Please add your actual code that generated this — OneCricketeer, Aug 28 '17 at 07:50
Possible duplicate of [How can I flatten lists without splitting strings?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5286541/how-can-i-flatten-lists-without-splitting-strings) — Kallz, Aug 28 '17 at 08:43

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 28 '17 at 08:04

I agree with cricket_007, you really should address this at the source, as it's poorly formed data and any solution will be brittle and prone to breaking. That said, if you just need something quick-and-dirty, the following should do the trick while avoiding using the unsafe eval function.

from ast import literal_eval

def flatten(iterable):
    result = []

    for item in iterable:
        try:
            item_eval = literal_eval(item)
            if not isinstance(item_eval, list):
                raise ValueError()
        except (ValueError, SyntaxError):
            result.append(item)
        else:
            result.extend(flatten(item_eval))

    return result


>>> data = [
...     'August 28, 2017',
...     'gilbert arizona',
...     '33.3528264',
...     '-111.789027',
...     '1236 Feet',
...     "[u'  ASCE 7* Ground Snow LoadElevation 2,000 feet', u' Ground Snow Load is0 psf']"
... ]

>>> flatten(data)
['August 28, 2017', 'gilbert arizona', '33.3528264', '-111.789027', '1236 Feet', u'  ASCE 7* Ground Snow LoadElevation 2,000 feet', u' Ground Snow Load is0 psf']

The `u` just denotes that it's a unicode string. You don't need to get rid of it. if you print the list element it won't be included. — DBrowne, Aug 28 '17 at 09:27
result.append(str(item)) try this u' will be removed instead of result.append(item) — keshaw, Aug 28 '17 at 09:56
The `u` will show up if you print the whole list, but not if you just print an individual element. As I said, it's just telling you that the string is `unicode`. The `u` isn't actually part of the data, you don't need to worry about it. — DBrowne, Aug 28 '17 at 10:16

How to convert sublist to list

1 Answers1