[FIXED] pandas - convert string into list of strings

Issue

I have this 'file.csv' file to read with pandas:

Title|Tags
T1|"[Tag1,Tag2]"
T1|"[Tag1,Tag2,Tag3]"
T2|"[Tag3,Tag1]"

using

df = pd.read_csv('file.csv', sep='|')

the output is:

  Title              Tags
0    T1       [Tag1,Tag2]
1    T1  [Tag1,Tag2,Tag3]
2    T2       [Tag3,Tag1]

I know that the column Tags is a full string, since:

In [64]: df['Tags'][0][0]
Out[64]: '['

I need to read it as a list of strings like ["Tag1","Tag2"]. I tried the solution provided in this question but no luck there, since I have the [ and ] characters that actually mess up the things.

The expecting output should be:

In [64]: df['Tags'][0][0]
Out[64]: 'Tag1'

Solution

You can split the string manually:

>>> df['Tags'] = df.Tags.apply(lambda x: x[1:-1].split(','))
>>> df.Tags[0]
['Tag1', 'Tag2']

Answered By - Mike Müller