Hopefully I can explain this properly. I have no control over how the input string which is kind of formatted like a list of lists but without quotes (so I can't use json.loads)

Example input (I'm reading it in using sys.argv):

"[[a,1],[b,2]]"

I'd like to convert this to be a real list of lists so I can iterate through them in my script.

I can get what I need using split but I was wondering if there was a better way to do it. Either a better way to divide them or a way to add quotes - whatever works.

import sys

try1 = sys.argv[1]
lst1 = try1.split("],")
print("try #1 (works but could be better?)")
print(len(lst1))
for item in lst1:
    print(item.lstrip("[[").rstrip("]]"))

# doesn't work - 1 item in the list
print("\n\nTry #2")
try2 = sys.argv[1:]
print(len(try2))

# doesn't work - length of 13
print("\n\nTry #3")
print(len(list(sys.argv[1])))

Output

$ python3 t.py "[[a,1],[b,2]]"
try #1 (works but could be better?)
2
a,1
b,2


Try #2
1


Try #3
13

Thanks for reading