How to convert a string to tuple

Question

I like to convert in a Python script the following string:

mystring='(5,650),(235,650),(465,650),(695,650)'

to a list of tuples

mytuple=[(5,650),(235,650),(465,650),(695,650)]

such that print mytuple[0] yields:

(5,650)

Answer 1

I'd use ast.literal_eval:

In [7]: ast.literal_eval('(5,650),(235,650),(465,650),(695,650)')
Out[7]: ((5, 650), (235, 650), (465, 650), (695, 650))

As seen above, this returns a tuple of tuples. If you want a list of tuples, simply apply list() to the result.