Parse a nested list with python argparse

Question

Assume that I am expecting a list of lists where the inner lists have different types and lengths, e. g.,

[[1, 2], ["foo", "bar"], [3.14, "baz", 20]]

how can I parse the above list using argparse?

Most useful questions on stackoverflow:

Similar questions exist, where most useful one is here. But they are not good enough in my case as they ignore the fact that the list is nested with different data types and lenghts.

Answer 1

expanding on my comment:

from argparse import ArgumentParser
import json

parser = ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-l', type=json.loads)
parser.parse_args(['-l', '[[1,2],["foo","bar"],[3.14,"baz",20]]'])

prints:

Namespace(l=[[1, 2], ['foo', 'bar'], [3.14, 'baz', 20]])