How to convert string to list

Question

Is it even possible, and if it is, how could I do something like this. Imagine you run this code and type in the input ["Hello","Sup"]

list = input()
something = list[0]

I'm not sure I follow. Could you specify what you want for your output in this example? — Checkmate, Feb 07 '19 at 20:53
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20250396/converting-string-that-looks-like-a-list-into-a-real-list-python — Luke DeLuccia, Feb 07 '19 at 20:53

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 07 '19 at 20:54

0

If the user is inputting a string of words separated by spaces, you can call do

something = str(list).split(" ")

This will encounter errors though if the user inputs something other than a string...

answered Feb 07 '19 at 20:54

Reedinationer

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 07 '19 at 20:56

0

Well, you could remove "["s and "]"s and then split it, which will return an actual list.

list.replace("[", "").replace("]", "").split()

answered Feb 07 '19 at 20:56

Victor Valente

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 07 '19 at 21:33

It is pretty simple with Python.

Just use ast or json and you're fine.

import ast

string_to_be_converted = '[ "I", "am", "a", "string"]'

mylist = ast.literal_eval(string_to_be_converted)

Here, type(mylist) shows us that mylist is a list, not a string.

However, I recommend using json for such an operation. Not only it is more secure, but also way faster.

import json

string_to_be_converted = '[ "I", "am", "a", "string"]'

mylist = json.loads(string_to_be_converted)

Speed comparison:

Ast:

In [1]: %timeit ast.literal_eval(string_to_be_converted)
13.6 µs per loop

Json:

In [2]: %timeit json.loads(string_to_be_converted)
2.99 µs per loop

3 Answers3