Python load list in list from text file

Question

I want to load list in list from text file. I went through many examples but no solution. This is what I want to do I am new bee to python

def main()
    mainlist = [[]]
    infile = open('listtxt.txt','r')
    for line in infile:
        mainlist.append(line)

    infile.close()

    print mainlist

`[[],['abc','def', 1],['ghi','jkl',2]]`

however what I want is something like this

[['abc','def',1],['ghi','jkl',2]]

my list contains

'abc','def',1
'ghi','jkl',2
'mno','pqr',3

what I want is when I access the list print mainlist[0] should return

'abc','def',1

any help will be highly appreciated Thanks,

Answer 1

It seems to me that you could do this as:

from ast import literal_eval
with open('listtxt.txt') as f:
    mainlist = [list(literal_eval(line)) for line in f]

This is the easist way to make sure that the types of the elements are preserved. e.g. a line like:

"foo","bar",3

will be transformed into 2 strings and an integer. Of course, the lines themselves need to be formatted as a python tuple... and this probably isn't the fastest approach due to it's generality and simplicity.

Answer 2

Maybe something like this.

mainlist = []
infile = open('listtxt.txt','r')
for line in infile:
    mainlist.append(line.strip().split(','))

infile.close()

print mainlist