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Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2013 20:24:39 -0500
From: Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com>
To: Harvey Greenberg <hjgreenberg@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: how to read list from file
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:56230

On 2013-10-05 18:08, Harvey Greenberg wrote:
> I am looping as for L in file.readlines(), where file is csv.
> 
> L is a list of 3 items, eg, [{'a':1, 'b':2}, [1,2,3], 10] Note that
> the first item is a dir and 2nd is a list, so parsing with split
> doesn't work.  Is there a way to convert L, which is a string, to
> the list of 3 items I want?

sounds like you want ast.literal_eval():

  Python 2.7.3 (default, Jan  2 2013, 13:56:14) 
  [GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
  information.
  >>> s = "[{'a':1, 'b':2}, [1,2,3], 10]"
  >>> import ast
  >>> print repr(ast.literal_eval(s))
  [{'a': 1, 'b': 2}, [1, 2, 3], 10]

-tkc