Python | Ways to merge strings into list

Given n strings, the task is to merge all strings into a single list.

While developing an application, there come many scenarios when we need to operate on the string and convert it as some mutable data structure, say list. There are multiple ways we can convert strings into list based on the requirement. Let’s understand it better with help of examples.

Method #1: Using ast

# Python code to merge all strings into a single list.

# Importing
import ast

# Initialization of strings
str1 ="'Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks'"
str2 ="'paras.j', 'jain.l'"
str3 ="'india'"


# Initialization of list
list = []

# Extending into single list
for x in (str1, str2, str3):
    list.extend(ast.literal_eval(x))

# printing output
print(list)

Output:

['Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks', 'paras.j', 'jain.l', 'i', 'n', 'd', 'i', 'a']

Method #2: Using eval

# Python code to merge all strings into a single list.

# Initialization of strings
str1 ="['Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks']"
str2 ="['paras.j', 'jain.l']"
str3 ="['india']"


out = [str1, str2, str3]

out = eval('+'.join(out))

# printing output
print(out)

Output:

['Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks', 'paras.j', 'jain.l', 'india']

# Python code to merge all strings into a single list.

# Initialization of strings
str1 ="'Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks'"
str2 = "'121', '142'"
str3 ="'extend', 'India'"


out = [str1, str2, str3]

out = eval('+'.join(out))

# printing output
print(list(out))

Output:

['Geeks', 'for', 'Geeks121', '142extend', 'India']