Remove Square Brackets and Double quotes from list of strings in Python

Question

I need to turn this string that looks like a list into an actual list -

status = "[['0', '2', '3', '5']]"

and expected result should be

status = ['0', '2', '3', '5']

Any suggestions?

_"I need to remove Square brackets and Double quotes from python list"_ -> "I need to turn this string that looks like a list into an actual list" — Aran-Fey, Apr 16 '18 at 14:31

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 16 '18 at 14:31

You can use re.findall:

import re
status = "[['0', '2', '3', '5']]"
new_status = re.findall('\d+', status)

Output:

['0', '2', '3', '5']

However, you can also use ast.literal_eval:

import ast
new_data = ast.literal_eval(status)[0]

Output:

['0', '2', '3', '5']

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 16 '18 at 14:31

The first one is not a list but a string, so you might get along with:

from ast import literal_eval
status = "[['0', '2', '3', '5']]"
status = literal_eval(status)
status = status[0]
print(status)

This yields

['0', '2', '3', '5']

But please consider correcting the string in the first place (where does it come from?).

2 Answers2