Python - String conversion to list

Question

I have a string field : "[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]". I want to convert this string to a list of strings.

For now I have the following function :

def stringToList(string):
    string = string[1:len(string)-1]
    try:
        if len(string) != 0: 
            tempList = string.split(", ")
            newList = list(map(lambda x: str(x), tempList))
        else:
            newList = []
    except:
        newList = [-9999]

    return(newList)

I want to know if there is a simpler or a shorter method with the same results. I could use ast.literal_eval() if my input data were of type int. But in my case, it does not work.

Thank you

ghchoi · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-11 08:20:14Z

4

Worth to know:

import re

string = "[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]"
founds = re.findall('[\-A-Za-z]+', string)

It will find all that consist at least one of of -, A-Z, and a-z.

One pros is that it can work with less-neat strings like:

string2 = " [  Paris, Marseille  , Pays-Bas  ] "
string3 = "   [ Paris  ,  Marseille  ,   Pays-Bas  ] "

edited Dec 11, 2019 at 8:20

answered Dec 11, 2019 at 8:13

ghchoi

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2 Comments

Ma0 Over a year ago

this is my favorite option but OP must somehow be certain of what can appear between the commas. For example as this answer now stands "[Paris1, M4rseill3]" would not work. It might therefore not be a bad idea to add a \d to the mix.

ghchoi Over a year ago

@Ev.Kounis You're right. Additionally, I personally believe char-by-char processing is the most proper approach for this kind of parsing problem, which is exactly what re internally does. Stripping left and right sides, splitting, and conditionally selecting elements are can be simply done in code-level, however, internally it is a bit painful... I think...

oppressionslayer · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-11 08:04:07Z

3

This splits it into a list of strings:

'[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]'.strip('[]').split(', ')                                                                                                                               
# ['Paris', 'Marseille', 'Pays-Bas']

answered Dec 11, 2019 at 8:04

oppressionslayer

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2 Comments

U13-Forward Over a year ago

Isn't this what i did?

oppressionslayer Over a year ago

Yes, it looks like we both did at about the same time

U13-Forward · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-11 08:02:14Z

2

Just use slicing and str.split:

>>> s = '[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]'
>>> s[1:-1].split(', ')
['Paris', 'Marseille', 'Pays-Bas']
>>>

Or str.strip with str.split:

>>> s = '[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]'
>>> s.strip('[]').split(', ')
['Paris', 'Marseille', 'Pays-Bas']
>>>

answered Dec 11, 2019 at 8:02

U13-Forward

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Comments

Negar37 · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-11 08:30:43Z

0

try this :

s = "[Paris, Marseille, Pays-Bas]"

s = [i.replace('[','').replace(']','').replace(' ','') for i in 
s.split(',')]
print(s)

output:

['Paris', 'Marseille', 'Pays-Bas']

edited Dec 11, 2019 at 8:30

answered Dec 11, 2019 at 8:24

Negar37

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