Get List from a String Python [duplicate]

Answer 1

You appear to have Python literals in a string. Use ast.literal_eval() to parse these as Python would.

Demo:

>>> from ast import literal_eval
>>> literal_eval('[1,2,3]')
[1, 2, 3]
>>> literal_eval("['1','2','3']")
['1', '2', '3']

ast.literal_eval() can handle None, booleans, numbers, strings, unicode strings, tuple, list, dictionary and set literals, arbitrarily nested.

Answer 2

>>> s = '[1,2,3]'
>>> l = s[1:-1].split(',')
>>> l
['1', '2', '3']
>>> type(l)
<type 'list'>