convert string representation of array to numpy array in python
<p>I can <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1894269/convert-string-representation-of-list-to-list-in-python">convert a string representation of a list to a list</a> with <code>ast.literal_eval</code>. Is there an equivalent for a numpy array?</p>

<pre><code>x = arange(4)
xs = str(x)
xs
'[0 1 2 3]'
# how do I convert xs back to an array
</code></pre>

<p>Using <code>ast.literal_eval(xs)</code> raises a <code>SyntaxError</code>. I can do the string parsing if I need to, but I thought there might be a better solution.</p>