string conversion

This can be most easily done using a regex. Basically, construct a regex that extracts the name,family and age from the string and extract the relevant data from the tuples returned to build your lists.

import re
if __name__=='__main__':
 myString = "[name = john adams, family = candy, age = 72],[ name = jeff, family = Thomson, age = 24]"
 answers=re.findall("\\[\\s*name = ([^,]+), family = (\\w+), age = (\\d+)\\]",myString)
 names=[x[0] for x in answers]
 families=[x[1] for x in answers]
 ages=map(int,(x[2] for x in answers))
 print "names: ",names
 print "families: ", families
 print "ages: ", ages 

import re
Names = []
Families = []
Ages = []
myString = "[name = john, family = candy, age = 72],[ name = jeff, family = Thomson, age = 24"
myregex = re.compile("name = (?P<name>.*?), family = (?P<family>.*?), age = (?P<age>.*)")
for list_ in myString.split(']'):
 found = re.search(myregex, list_).groupdict()
 Names.append(found['name'])
 Families.append(found['family'])
 Ages.append(int(found['age']))

Break the problem down:

1. Parse the string into lists
2. Load the lists into your other lists.

You'll have a problem, because the entities between commas aren't nice dictionaries.

You should parse that to a list of dictionaries, not three differente lists, co-related only by data order. Like in data = [ {"name": "John", "family": "Candy", "age": 72 }, ...]

One possibility, if you can't change the data source, is to do some naive parsing with string methods like split:

myString = "[name = john, family = candy, age = 72],[ name = jeff, family = Thomson, age = 24]"
data = []
for block in myString.split("]"):
 if not block: break
 block = block.split("[")[1]
 entry_dict = {}
 for part in block.split(","):
 key, value = part.split("=")
 key = key.strip()
 value = value.strip()
 if key == "age": value = int(value)
 entry_dict[key] = value
 data.append (entry_dict)

Or, if you are on python 2.7 (or 3.1) and want a shorter code, you can use a dict generator (you can use generators in other versions as well, just creating alist of tuples and adding a "dict" call) :

myString = "[name = john, family = candy, age = 72],[ name = jeff, family = Thomson, age = 24]"

data = []
for block in myString.split("]"):
 if not block: break
 block = block.split("[")[1]
 entry_dict = {}
 data.append ({(part.split("=")[0].strip(), part.split("=")[1].strip()) for part in block.split(",") })

(in this version did not convert "age" to numbers, though)

• python
• string