Convert String representation of a List to a Dictionary Python

Question

How can I convert a str representation of the list, such as the below string into a dictionary?

a = '[100:0.345,123:0.34,145:0.86]'

Expected output :

{100:0.345,123:0.34,145:0.86}

First tried to convert the string into a list using ast.literal_eval. But it's showing an error as : invalid syntax

Answer 1

It's showing as invalid syntax because it has the wrong brackets, so you could do

ast.literal_eval(a.replace("[","{").replace("]", "}"))

Or alternatively parse the string yourself in a dictionary comprehension

{x.split(":")[0]: x.split(":")[1] for x in a[1:-1].split(",")}

and if as mentioned there are [ or ] elsewhere in your string the following may be more robust

ast.literal_eval("{" + a[1:-1] +"}")

Answer 2

I would simply try

eval(a.replace('[', '{').replace(']', '}'))

Answer 3

To convert to a dict:

Code:

data = '[100:0.345,123:0.34,145:0.86]'

new_data = dict(y.split(':') for y in (x.strip().strip('[').strip(']')
                                       for x in data.split(',')))

print(new_data)

Or if you need numbers not strings:

new_data = dict((map(float, y.split(':'))) for y in (
    x.strip().strip('[').strip(']') for x in data.split(',')))

Results:

{'100': '0.345', '123': '0.34', '145': '0.86'}

{145.0: 0.86, 123.0: 0.34, 100.0: 0.345}

Answer 4

Translate brackets to braces, literal_eval.

rebracket = {91: 123, 93: 125}
a = '[100:0.345,123:0.34,145:0.86]'
literal_eval(a.translate(rebracket))

Answer 5

Given a string representation of a dict:

a = '[100:0.345,123:0.34,145:0.86]'

Ignore the containing braces [..], and break up the elements on commas:

a = a[1:-1].split(",")

For each element, separate the key and value:

d1 = [x.split(":") for x in a]

Reconstitute the parsed data as a dict:

d2 = { int(k[0]) : float(k[1]) for k in d1}