help with creating dict from string

[Tim]

On Thursday, November 6, 2014 12:41:10 PM UTC-5, Peter Otten wrote:
> Tim wrote:
> 
> > hi, I have strings coming in with this format:
> > 
> >     '[one=two, three=four five, six, seven=eight]'
> > 
> > and I want to create from that string, this dictionary:
> >     {'one':'two', 'three':'four five', 'six':True, 'seven':'eight'}
> > 
> > snip
> 
> Not everything has to be a one-liner ;) If it works I don't think something
> 
> >>> s = '[one=two, three=four five, six, seven=eight]'
> >>> def fix(pair):
> ...     key, eq, value = pair.partition("=")
> ...     return key.strip(), value if eq else True
> ... 
> >>> dict(fix(t) for t in s.strip("[]").split(","))
> {'three': 'four five', 'seven': 'eight', 'one': 'two', 'six': True}
> 
> is particularly inelegant. Are you sure that your grammar is not more 
> complex than your example, e. g. that "," cannot occur in the values?

hi Peter,
I definitely wouldn't say that is inelegant :-) 

I had never used the partition method and I didn't realize (or maybe remember) that strip could take a string of characters, not just one. 

Oh yes, I am positive about the grammar--no commas are allowed in the values. I think your solution is pretty elegant. Thanks for your help!
--Tim