Configparser list-value clean

val2list.py

#! /usr/bin/env python3
# Snippet for cleaning out configuration file list-values (import configparser).
# For reading/processing configuration file values, performance is not an issue.
# The  key = value  can sometimes look something like:
#
#       files = ,  data.db ,script.py,  ,,  data.db   ,,,
#
# NOTE: Neither of these can deal with quotations (" or ') and thus cannot process
#       list items that need to have the separator (,) in them.
#
files = ",/tmp/x = b   ,data.db ,script.py,  ,,  data.db   ,,,"

def val2list(val: str) -> list:
    """NOTE: Order is not preserved."""
    return list(set([x.strip() for x in val.split(",") if x.strip()]))

def val_to_list(val: str) -> list:
    """Python 3.7+ solution (dictionaries are guaranteed to maintain order)."""
    return list(dict.fromkeys([x.strip() for x in val.split(",") if x.strip()]))

print(val2list(files))
print(val_to_list(files))