Python put string into dictionary

Question

I want to convert a string into a dictionary. I saved this dictionary previously in a text file.

The problem is now, that I am not sure, how the structure of the keys are. The values are generated with Counter(dictionaryName). The dictionary is really large, so I cannot check every key to see how it would be possible.

The keys can contain simple quotes like ', double quotes ", commas and maybe other characters. So is there any possibility to convert it back into a dictionary?

For example this is stored in the file:

Counter({'element0':512, "'4,5'element1":50, '4:55foobar':23,...})

I found previous solutions with for example json, but I have problems with the double quotes and I cannot simply split for the commas.

Answer 1

If you trust the source, load from collections import Counter and eval() the string

Answer 2

How about something like:

>> from collections import Counter
>> line = '''Counter({'element0':512, "'4,5'element1":50, '4:55foobar':23})'''
>> D = eval(line)
>> D
 Counter({"'4,5'element1": 50, '4:55foobar': 23, 'element0': 512})