Convert a character variable to a list of list

Question

i want to convert a character variable to a list of list. My character looks like as follows:

\"[[\"a\",2],[\"b\",5]]\"

The expected list

Answer 1

Here is one possibility via base R,

xx <- '[[a, 2], [b, 5]]'
lapply(split(matrix(gsub('[[:punct:]]', '', unlist(strsplit(xx, ','))), 
                                             nrow = 2, byrow = T), 1:2), 
                                             function(i) list(i[[1]], as.numeric(i[[2]])))

#$`1`
#$`1`[[1]]
#[1] "a"

#$`1`[[2]]
#[1] 2


#$`2`
#$`2`[[1]]
#[1] " b"

#$`2`[[2]]
#[1] 5