title: How to convert the datatype of a column from String to List in pandas?
body: <p>In my Panda's dataframe I have a set of columns with datatype string, and I want to typecast them into the list.</p>
  <p>For example - I want to convert the string &quot;<code>['C0020649', 'C0020538', 'C0020649']</code>&quot; into a list <code>['C0020649', 'C0020538', 'C0020649']</code> so that I can iterate through each element.</p>
  <p>Initially, I tried to typecast using <code>ast.literal_eval()</code> but it throws ValueError:</p>
  <pre><code>malformed node or string: 14 error. 
  </code></pre>
  <p>The most interesting thing here is that the datatype of the column is automatically converted into string type whenever I try to save the values in the dataframe's column as a list.</p>
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>