How do I properly convert a string to a list

Question

I have a function that returns a message as a string as follows:

 l = ['["sure","kkk"]', '["sure","ii"]']

I have tried to remove the "'" character through an iteration but its not working for me. This is my code:

print([item.replace('\'["','"').replace('"]\'','"') for item in l])

Is there a better way to do this since I want the results as this:

l = [["sure","kkk"], ["sure","ii"]]

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '20 at 13:36

1

Those are JSON encoded strings, so you should use the json API for that and not try to parse it "yourself":

import json

l = ['["sure","kkk"]', '["sure","ii"]']
l = [json.loads(s) for s in l]
print(l)  # [['sure', 'kkk'], ['sure', 'ii']]

Can also be achieved with map instead of list comprehension:

l = list(map(json.loads, l))

answered Jul 12 '20 at 13:36

trincot

I see you eventually changed the acceptance flag to the `literal_eval` answer. If that is what you need, and not JSON parsing, then it would be good to specify more about the use case: do you get your values from system-to-system communication? Do they come from user input? The nice thing about JSON is that it is highly portable and the [`loads` method is significantly faster than `literal_eval`](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21223392/why-is-json-loads-an-order-of-magnitude-faster-than-ast-literal-eval). – trincot Jul 13 '20 at 10:00
Thanks for this. I will have a look at the details. Kind regards. – lobjc Jul 13 '20 at 10:06

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 13 '20 at 05:05

1

Alternatively, you can also use ast.literal_eval (see the docs) as follows:

import ast

l = ['["sure","kkk"]', '["sure","ii"]']
l = [ast.literal_eval(s) for s in l]
print(l)  # [['sure', 'kkk'], ['sure', 'ii']]

answered Jul 13 '20 at 05:05

lmiguelvargasf

2 Answers2