pandas - convert string into list of strings [duplicate]

Question

I have this 'file.csv' file to read with pandas:

Title|Tags T1|"[Tag1,Tag2]" T1|"[Tag1,Tag2,Tag3]" T2|"[Tag3,Tag1]" 

using

df = pd.read_csv('file.csv', sep='|') 

the output is:

  Title              Tags 0    T1       [Tag1,Tag2] 1    T1  [Tag1,Tag2,Tag3] 2    T2       [Tag3,Tag1] 

I know that the column Tags is a full string, since:

In [64]: df['Tags'][0][0] Out[64]: '[' 

I need to read it as a list of strings like ["Tag1","Tag2"]. I tried the solution provided in this question but no luck there, since I have the [ and ] characters that actually mess up the things.

The expecting output should be:

In [64]: df['Tags'][0][0] Out[64]: 'Tag1' 

Answer 1

You can split the string manually:

>>> df['Tags'] = df.Tags.apply(lambda x: x[1:-1].split(',')) >>> df.Tags[0] ['Tag1', 'Tag2'] 

Answer 2

Or

df.Tags=df.Tags.str[1:-1].str.split(',').tolist()