Best way to get the list-like string back into a list

Question

Quick question, some data was corrupted and now all the lists I had have turned into strings:

e.g: ["en", "ru"],

is now :

str(["en", "ru"])

What is the best way to turn it back to list?

Found a duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1894269/convert-string-representation-of-list-to-list-in-python Thanks everyone! — Ivan Bilan, Dec 09 '16 at 09:07

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '16 at 09:06

4

Use ast.literal_eval. Do not use eval it is unsafe.

>>> import ast
>>> ast.literal_eval(str(["en", "ru"]))
['en', 'ru']

answered Dec 09 '16 at 09:06

Chris_Rands

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '16 at 09:05

1

eval(str(["a", "b"]))

gets you ["a", "b"]

answered Dec 09 '16 at 09:05

jf328

2 Answers2