break up a value in a list to a list of individual items

[Terry Reedy]

r3bol wrote:
> Hi, sorry to post this, but I've had a really hard time finding how to
> do it.
> Q.
> How can I break up a value in a list to a list of individual items
> (preferably without importing any modules)?
> Like...
> ['12345'] (string)
> to
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] [numbers]

You did not specify what you want to happen if the original list has 
more than one item.  If you want to keep the other items....

 >>> lst = [1, '234', 5]
 >>> lst[1:2] = [int(i) for i in lst[1]] # insert slice
 >>> lst
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

 >>> lst = [1, '234', 5]
 >>> lst[1] = [int(i) for i in lst[1]] # insert item
 >>> lst
[1, [2, 3, 4], 5]