gistfile1.txt

>>> def is_int(x):
...     try:
...             int(x)
...             return True
...     except:
...             pass
...     return False
...
>>> [int(x) if is_int(x) else x for x in 'asdf asdf 23'.split(' ')]
['asdf', 'asdf', 23]

The exception handling should be made more specific to catch ValueError or something like that. So don’t use this gist as an example :-p.