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# if you have something like this, and you want to convert it
# actual python list
lst = '["Albert Einstein", "Isaac Newton"]'
# then you can use python `eval` function
lst = eval(lst)
# output
["Albert Einstein", "Isaac Newton"]
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>>> import ast
>>> x = '[ "A","B","C" , " D"]'
>>> x = ast.literal_eval(x)
>>> x
['A', 'B', 'C', ' D']
>>> x = [n.strip() for n in x]
>>> x
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']