replacement of rexec?

[Huaiyu Zhu]

What is the prefered way to eval a string like "('a', 1)"?  These strings
are representations of simple objects of type int, str, or dict, tuple or
list made of them.  I do not want to use naked eval in case I run the
script on a wrong file that happens to contain Python code.

Previously I used the following

from rexec import RExec
r_eval = RExec().r_eval

After upgrading to 2.3 it no longer works:

  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/rexec.py", line 184, in __init__
    raise RuntimeError, "This code is not secure in Python 2.2 and 2.3"
RuntimeError: This code is not secure in Python 2.2 and 2.3

I understand that rexec is not secure against malicious attacks.  However,
it is safer than eval for preventing accidents.  What should I use in
place?  The ideal thing I'm looking for is a function that can parse only
"non-active" python objects and raise exception on anything else.

Huaiyu