Deserializing array of arrays from a string

Question

I need to deserialize an array of arrays from a string like '[["a", "b"], ["c", "d"]]'.

I tried using pickle, but I didn't really get how to use it.

How can I deserialize this string?

Answer 1

Use ast.literal_eval():

import ast

ast.literal_eval('[["a", "b"], ["c", "d"]]')

This outputs:

[['a', 'b'], ['c', 'd']]

(As a side note, you should use ast.literal_eval() over eval() whenever possible, for security reasons. More information on this can be found here. eval() can be extremely dangerous, and you should only use it unless you're aware of its risks.)