I have a string as [u'[15]']. I need it as a list with an int i.e. [15]
I tried ast.literal_eval()
But it gives the error
ValueError: malformed string
How do I fix it?
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That seems like a list, are you sure, you do not have a list?Anand S Kumar– Anand S Kumar2015-08-04 15:17:13 +00:00Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 15:17
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<type 'list'> when I print type(value). where value=[u'[15]']user77005– user770052015-08-04 15:21:23 +00:00Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 15:21
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oh I understood the problem I should do ast.literal_eval(value[0]). Is that correct?user77005– user770052015-08-04 15:23:08 +00:00Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 15:23
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@user77005, yes, you cannot call literal_eval on a listPadraic Cunningham– Padraic Cunningham2015-08-04 15:25:44 +00:00Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 15:25
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2 Answers
You have a list with a unicode string inside, you need to access the element inside the list and call literal_eval on that:
from ast import literal_eval
print literal_eval([u'[15]'][0])
[15]
You are getting an error by trying to pass the list to literal_eval not the string inside.
In [2]: literal_eval(literal_eval([u'[15]']))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-7468abfb5acf> in <module>()
----> 1 literal_eval(literal_eval([u'[15]']))
/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.pyc in literal_eval(node_or_string)
78 return left - right
79 raise ValueError('malformed string')
---> 80 return _convert(node_or_string)
81
82
/usr/lib/python2.7/ast.pyc in _convert(node)
77 else:
78 return left - right
---> 79 raise ValueError('malformed string')
80 return _convert(node_or_string)
81
answered Aug 4, 2015 at 15:20
Padraic Cunningham
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Comments
I am getting your error, when I pass in the list , Example -
>>> a = [u'[15]']
>>> ast.literal_eval(a)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/ast.py", line 68, in literal_eval
return _convert(node_or_string)
File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/ast.py", line 67, in _convert
raise ValueError('malformed string')
ValueError: malformed string
If I pass in a string like - "[u'[15]']" , I do not get any error -
>>> a = "[u'[15]']"
>>> ast.literal_eval(a)
[u'[15]']
Seems like you have a list, instead of a string, if so, you can iterate over the list and then pass in the element to ast.literal_eval , to get your element. Example -
>>> a = [u'[15]']
>>> import ast
>>> for i in a:
... ast.literal_eval(i)
...
[15]
You can store each element in a list of its own, or if you are sure there is only one element you can also do -
>>> x = ast.literal_eval(a[0])
>>> x
[15]
>>> type(x)
<type 'list'>
2 Comments
sawyermclane
For the final code snippet you have, what is type(x)?
Anand S Kumar
It is list . Added that to answer.