Safe eval, or how to get list from string

[Jason Mobarak]

bwooste... at gmail.com wrote:
> if there is list1 = "[ 'filea', 'fileb', ]", I can get at list by
> doing:
> reallist = eval(list1)
> is there an easier/simpler method of doing the same thing as
realstring
> and reallist lines above?

http://twistedmatrix.com/users/moshez/unrepr.py

Example:

>>> from unrepr import unrepr
>>> unrepr("[ 'filea', 'fileb', ]")
['filea', 'fileb']