How to parse a list (array) input?

You can do something like this if you want to read this [0,2,1,-3] input:

s = input() #[0,2,1,-3]
lst = s[1:-1].split(',')
print(lst)

Output:

['0', '2', '1', '-3']

You can do this to convert the elements to integers:

lst = [int(i) for i in lst]
print(lst)

Output:

[0, 2, 1, -3]

if the input is a string and in the format of a dictionary or a list (mainly json compatible) then you could try the built-in JSON package.

import json

inp = "[0,2,1,-3]"

data = json.loads(inp)

here inp is of type string and data will be a list. The structure of data can change according to the input provided.

Note: this wont work if the input is like 0 2 1 -3

Use split. Here is a script that may help you.

a = "0 2 1 -3"
b = a.split(" ")
print(b)

The result is:

['0', '2', '1', '-3']

If you are passing input through cli like this

python3 script.py 0 2 1 -3

then,

from sys import argv
inputs = argv[1:]
print(inputs)

If you trust the input you can do it like this:

>>> "[0, 2, 1, -3]".strip("[]").split(",")
['0', ' 2', ' 1', ' -3']

If the parsed list should hold integers instead of strings then:

>>> list(map(int, "[0, 2, 1, -3]".strip("[]").split(",")))
[0, 2, 1, -3]