If your list contains pure integer strings, the accepted awnswer is the way to go. This solution will crash if you give it things that are not integers.
So: if you have data that may contain ints, possibly floats or other things as well - you can leverage your own function with errorhandling:
def maybeMakeNumber(s):
"""Returns a string 's' into a integer if possible, a float if needed or
returns it as is."""
# handle None, "", 0
if not s:
return s
try:
f = float(s)
i = int(f)
return i if f == i else f
except ValueError:
return s
data = ["unkind", "data", "42", 98, "47.11", "of mixed", "types"]
converted = list(map(maybeMakeNumber, data))
print(converted)
Output:
['unkind', 'data', 42, 98, 47.11, 'of mixed', 'types']
To also handle iterables inside iterables you can use this helper:
from collections.abc import Iterable, Mapping
def convertEr(iterab):
"""Tries to convert an iterable to list of floats, ints or the original thing
from the iterable. Converts any iterable (tuple,set, ...) to itself in output.
Does not work for Mappings - you would need to check abc.Mapping and handle
things like {1:42, "1":84} when converting them - so they come out as is."""
if isinstance(iterab, str):
return maybeMakeNumber(iterab)
if isinstance(iterab, Mapping):
return iterab
if isinstance(iterab, Iterable):
return iterab.__class__(convertEr(p) for p in iterab)
data = ["unkind", {1: 3,"1":42}, "data", "42", 98, "47.11", "of mixed",
("0", "8", {"15", "things"}, "3.141"), "types"]
converted = convertEr(data)
print(converted)
Output:
['unkind', {1: 3, '1': 42}, 'data', 42, 98, 47.11, 'of mixed',
(0, 8, {'things', 15}, 3.141), 'types'] # sets are unordered, hence diffrent order