Loading a Python collection from an text-file

[Fuzzyman]

Seeing as we're suggesting alternatives, ConfigObj is great for hand
readable/writable data persistence.

You can use validate and ConfigPersist for automatic type conversion.

You can persist (basically) all the standard datatypes using this. The
syntax is usually more 'familiar' than Yaml, but it's not as flexible.

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/configobj.html

All the best,

Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml