Serhiy Storchaka added the comment: The documentation for ast.literal_eval(): Safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python literal or container display. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, bytes, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, sets, booleans, and ``None``. https://docs.python.org/3/library/ast.html#ast.literal_eval If we are going to add support of a function call set(), we should change the documentation. And if add support of non-literals, where should we stop? Should we support also frozenset() and bytearray()? inf and nan? infj and nanj? complex()? Ellipsis? __debug__? ---------- assignee: -> docs@python components: +Documentation -Library (Lib) nosy: +docs@python resolution: fixed -> stage: resolved -> needs patch status: closed -> open _______________________________________ Python tracker https://bugs.python.org/issue39158 _______________________________________