Modifying lists of lists in Robot Framework

Question

I have a nested list that I am using in Robot Framework. I would like to change one item in a sublist at the Robot Framework level.

My list looks like this:

[ bob, mary, [june, july, august]]

I want to change "july" to something else, say "september"

Robot Framework will let me change 'bob' or 'mary', but if I try to insert a list, it is converted into strings.

(Oh, I have tried to use the "Insert Into List keyword to insert a new sub list, and other List keywords, no luck with any.)

Answer 1

I was able to achieve the modification with Collections library keywords like this

*** settings ***                                                                       
Library   Collections                                                                

*** test cases ***                                                                     
test    ${l1}=  Create List  1  2  3                                        
        ${l2}=  Create List  foo  bar  ${l1}                                              
        ${sub}=  Get From List  ${l2}  2 
        Set List Value   ${sub}   2   400 
        Set List Value   ${l2}  2  ${sub}  
        Log  ${l2} 

I was not able to find a way to directly alter the sublist, it has to be first extracted, then modified and finally put back in place.

Answer 2

I am guessing from the lack of response that there isn't a neat clean solution to this. Here is what I have done:

I created a utility thusly:

class Pybot_Utilities:
    def sublistReplace(self, processList, item, SublistIndex, ItemIndex):
        '''
        Replaces an item in a sublist
        Takes a list, an object, an index to the sublist, and an index to a location in the sublist inserts the object into a sublist of the list at the location specified. 
        So if the list STUFF is (X, Y, (A,B,C)) and you want to change B to FOO give these parameters: [STUFF, FOO, 2, 1]
        '''

        SublistIndex=int(SublistIndex)
        ItemIndex=int(ItemIndex)
        processList[SublistIndex][ItemIndex] = str(item)
        return processList

I then put this entry in my robot framework test suite file:

|    | ${ListWithSublist} = | sublistReplace    | ${ListWithSublist]}  | NewItem | 1 | 1 |

(Importing my utility library, of course)

After this runs, the second item (index 1) in the sublist at index 1 of the list will be "NewItem"

Perhaps not the most elegant or flexible, but it will do the job for now