How to Execute Strings as Python Commands

In this tutorial, we will show you how to execute strings as Python commands. This allows us to write dynamic strings using f-strings and execute them as commands in Python. This can be done with the exec() method as we can see with a simple example below.

import pandas as pd

# Let's create a pandas data frame

df = pd.DataFrame({'Col_1':[1,2,3,4,5],
                   'Col_2':['A','B','C','D','E']})

df
 

Now, we will create the same data frame but this time by running it as a string.

df_string = 'df = pd.DataFrame({"Col_1":[1,2,3,4,5],"Col_2":["A","B","C","D","E"]})'

exec(df_string)

df
 

Finally, if we would like to run an expression we should use the eval() method. For example:

eval("5 + 10")
 

15

Or,

eval("sum([1, 2, 3])")
 

6