What is the best way to convert a printed list in Python back into an actual list

Question

So given the a a textual representation of a list

['cellular organisms', 'Bacteria', 'Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi group', 'Bacteroidetes',   'Bacteroidia', 'Bacteroidales', 'Bacteroidaceae', 'Bacteroides', 'Bacteroides vulgatus']

What is the easiest way to convert this text back into an actual list within a python script? Is split really the best way? Thanks!

Answer 1

>>> import ast
>>> a = "['cellular organisms', 'Bacteria', 'Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi group', 'Bacteroidetes',   'Bacteroidiroidales', 'Bacteroidaceae', 'Bacteroides', 'Bacteroides vulgatus']"
>>> ast.literal_eval(a)
['cellular organisms', 'Bacteria', 'Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi group', 'Bacteroidetes', 'Bacteroidia', 'Bacteroidales', 'Bacteroidaceae', 'Bacteroides', 'Bacteroides vulgatus']

From the ast module:

ast.literal_eval(node_or_string)

Safely evaluate an expression node or a Unicode or Latin-1 encoded string containing a Python expression. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None.

This can be used for safely evaluating strings containing Python expressions from untrusted sources without the need to parse the values oneself.