Convert a list of strings to either int or float

Question

I have a list which looks something like this:

[\'1\', \'2\', \'3.4\', \'5.6\', \'7.8\']

How do I change the first two to int

Answer 1

Why not use ast.literal_eval?

import ast

[ast.literal_eval(el) for el in lst]

Should handle all corner cases. It's a little heavyweight for this use case, but if you expect to handle any Number-like string in the list, this'll do it.