title: How to read a column of csv as dtype list using pandas?
body: <p>I have a csv file with 3 columns, wherein each row of Column 3 has list of values in it. As you can see from the following table structure</p>
  
  <pre><code>Col1,Col2,Col3
  1,a1,"['Proj1', 'Proj2']"
  2,a2,"['Proj3', 'Proj2']"
  3,a3,"['Proj4', 'Proj1']"
  4,a4,"['Proj3', 'Proj4']"
  5,a5,"['Proj5', 'Proj2']"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Whenever I try to read this csv, Col3 is getting read as str object and not as list. I tried to alter the dtype of that column to list but got "Attribute Error" as below</p>
  
  <pre><code>df = pd.read_csv("inputfile.csv")
  df.Col3.dtype = list
  
  AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
  &lt;ipython-input-19-6f9ec76b1b30&gt; in &lt;module&gt;()
  ----&gt; 1 df.Col3.dtype = list
  
  C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pandas\core\generic.pyc in __setattr__(self,         name, value)
     1953                     object.__setattr__(self, name, value)
     1954             except (AttributeError, TypeError):
  -&gt; 1955                 object.__setattr__(self, name, value)
     1956 
     1957     #----------------------------------------------------------------------
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>AttributeError: can't set attribute</p>
  
  <p>It would be really great if you can guide me how to go about it.</p>