Question

I have a string of the format

s = "a, b, [c, d, ....]"

how can I split it into an array with

[c, d,, ..] 

into one element and a and b as another elements of the resultant array cleanly. If I try to use

s.split(',')

even [c,d, …] gets split.

Answer 1

If you’re on 2.6+, then ast.literal_eval is the way to go… (assuming you have literals that is – otherwise, maybe use eval with caution) – or, look at the pyparsing library which has a “safe” eval example at http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/Examples (look for parsePythonValue.py)

literal_eval solution:

from ast import literal_eval

s = "'a', 'b', ['c', 'd', 'z']"
print literal_eval(s)