Convert a String representation of a Dictionary to a dictionary

Question

How can I convert the str representation of a dict  such as the following string  into a dict   s      muffin     lolz    foo     kitty      I prefer not to use eval  What else can I use   The main reason for this  is one of my coworkers classes he wrote  converts all input into strings  I m not in the mood to go and modify his classes  to deal with this issue

User · Answer

To summarize   import ast  yaml  json  timeit  descs   short string   long string   strings     809001  2  848545  2  565828  1      2979  1  30581  1  7296  1  127256  1  18803  2  41619  1  41312  1  16837  1  7253  1  70075  1  3453  1  4126  1  23599  1  11465  3  19172  1  4019  1  4775  1  64225  1  3235  2  15593  1  7528  1  176840  1  40022  1  152854  1  9878  1  16156  1  6512  1  4138  1  11090  1  12259  1  4934  1  65581  1  9747  2  18290  1  107981  1  459762  1  23177  1  23246  1  3591  1  3671  1  5767  1  3930  1  89507  2  19293  1  92797  1  32444  2  70089  1  46549  1  30988  1  4613  1  14042  1  26298  1  222972  1  2982  1  3932  1  11134  1  3084  1  6516  1  486617  1  14475  2  2127  1  51359  1  2662  1  4121  1  53848  2  552967  1  204081  1  5675  2  32433  1  92448  1    funcs  json loads eval ast literal eval yaml load   for  desc string in zip descs strings       print       desc            print         for  func in funcs          print func   module       func   name                 timeit func string              print       Results       short string      json loads  4 47   s    33 4 ns per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  100000 loops each  builtins eval  24 1   s    163 ns per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10000 loops each  ast literal eval  30 4   s    299 ns per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10000 loops each  yaml load  504   s    1 29   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  1000 loops each       long string      json loads  29 6   s    230 ns per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10000 loops each  builtins eval  219   s    3 92   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  1000 loops each  ast literal eval  331   s    1 89   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  1000 loops each  yaml load  9 02 ms    92 2   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  100 loops each    Conclusion  prefer json loads

User · Answer

Use json  the ast library consumes a lot of memory and and slower  I have a process that needs to read a text file of 156Mb  Ast with 5 minutes delay for the conversion dictionary json and 1 minutes using 60  less memory

User · Answer

https   docs python org 3 8 library json html  JSON can solve this problem though its decoder wants double quotes around keys and values   If you don t mind a replace hack     import json s      muffin     lolz    foo     kitty    json acceptable string   s replace            d   json loads json acceptable string    d    u muffin   u lolz   u foo   u kitty     NOTE that if you have single quotes as a part of your keys or values this will fail due to improper character replacement  This solution is only recommended if you have a strong aversion to the eval solution   More about json single quote  jQuery parseJSON throws    Invalid JSON    error due to escaped single quote in JSON

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no any libs are used   dict format string      1   one    2     two    d      elems    filter str isalnum dict format string split       values   elems 1  2  keys     elems 0  2  d update zip keys values     NOTE  As it has hardcoded split      will work only for strings where data  is  single quoted

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To OP s example   s      muffin     lolz    foo     kitty      We can use Yaml to deal with this kind of non-standard json in string    gt  gt  gt  import yaml  gt  gt  gt  s      muffin     lolz    foo     kitty     gt  gt  gt  s    muffin     lolz    foo     kitty     gt  gt  gt  yaml load s    muffin    lolz    foo    kitty

User · Answer

You can use the built-in ast literal eval   gt  gt  gt  import ast  gt  gt  gt  ast literal eval  quot   muffin     lolz    foo     kitty   quot     muffin    lolz    foo    kitty    This is safer than using eval   As its own docs say       help ast literal eval  Help on function literal eval in module ast   literal eval node or string      Safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python     expression   The string or node provided may only consist of the following     Python literal structures  strings  numbers  tuples  lists  dicts  booleans      and None   For example   gt  gt  gt  eval  quot shutil rmtree  mongo   quot   Traceback  most recent call last     File  quot  lt stdin gt  quot   line 1  in  lt module gt    File  quot  lt string gt  quot   line 1  in  lt module gt    File  quot  opt Python-2 6 1 lib python2 6 shutil py quot   line 208  in rmtree     onerror os listdir  path  sys exc info      File  quot  opt Python-2 6 1 lib python2 6 shutil py quot   line 206  in rmtree     names   os listdir path  OSError   Errno 2  No such file or directory   mongo   gt  gt  gt  ast literal eval  quot shutil rmtree  mongo   quot   Traceback  most recent call last     File  quot  lt stdin gt  quot   line 1  in  lt module gt    File  quot  opt Python-2 6 1 lib python2 6 ast py quot   line 68  in literal eval     return  convert node or string    File  quot  opt Python-2 6 1 lib python2 6 ast py quot   line 67  in  convert     raise ValueError  malformed string   ValueError  malformed string

User · Answer

If the string can always be trusted  you could use eval  or use literal eval as suggested  it s safe no matter what the string is   Otherwise you need a parser  A JSON parser  such as simplejson  would work if he only ever stores content that fits with the JSON scheme

User · Answer

string      server1   value   server2   value      Now removing   and   s   string replace          finalstring   s replace             Splitting the string based on   we get key value pairs list   finalstring split       dictionary     for i in list       Get Key Value pairs separately to store in dictionary     keyvalue   i split            Replacing the single quotes in the leading      m  keyvalue 0  strip           m   m replace               dictionary m    keyvalue 1  strip         print dictionary

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using json loads    gt  gt  gt  import json  gt  gt  gt  h      foo   bar    foo2   bar2     gt  gt  gt  d   json loads h   gt  gt  gt  d  u foo   u bar   u foo2   u bar2    gt  gt  gt  type d   lt type  dict  gt

[python] Convert a String representation of a Dictionary to a dictionary?

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