title: How to change type of list to str?
body: <p>I am extracting a list from html of a web page in the format </p>
  
  <pre><code>lst = '["a","b","c"]' # (type &lt;str&gt;)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The data type of the above is <strong>str</strong> and I want it to convert to a python <strong>list type</strong> , somthing like this</p>
  
  <pre><code>lst = ["a","b","c"]  #(type &lt;list&gt;)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can obtain the above by </p>
  
  <pre><code>lst = lst[1:-1].replace('"','').split(',')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But as the actual value of a,b &amp;c is quite long and complex(contains long html text), I can't be dependent on the above method.</p>
  
  <p>I also tried doing it with json module and using <code>json.loads(lst)</code> , that is giving the below exception</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-none prettyprint-override"><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "&lt;stdin&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
    File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 339, in loads
      return _default_decoder.decode(s)
    File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 364, in decode
      obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
    File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 382, in raw_decode
      raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
  ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any way of converting to list in Python?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: The actual value of the list is:
      <code>['reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.applyonlinejobdesc','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.referjobdesc','reqlistitem.applyemailsubjectapplication','reqlistitem.applyemailjobdesc','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.addedtojobcart','reqlistitem.displayjobcartactionjobdesc','reqlistitem.shareURL','reqlistitem.title','reqlistitem.shareable','reqlistitem.title','reqlistitem.contestnumber','reqlistitem.contestnumber','reqlistitem.description','reqlistitem.description','reqlistitem.primarylocation','reqlistitem.primarylocation','reqlistitem.otherlocations','reqlistitem.jobschedule','reqlistitem.jobschedule','reqlistitem.jobfield','reqlistitem.jobfield','reqlistitem.displayreferfriendaction','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.applyonlinejobdesc','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.referjobdesc','reqlistitem.applyemailsubjectapplication','reqlistitem.applyemailjobdesc','reqlistitem.no','reqlistitem.addedtojobcart','reqlistitem.displayjobcartactionjobdesc','reqlistitem.shareURL','reqlistitem.title','reqlistitem.shareable']</code></p>