title: Creating functools.partial *args & *kwargs from parsed strings
body: <p>I am being passed lists of strings that I would like to convert to method calls using functools.partial:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[ 'object1.method1(arg1, arg2, 4, key=value)', 'object2.method2(6, arg1)' ...]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It's easy to use a regexp to generate the necessary 'func' argument to functools.partial, but I'm having a devil of a time easily converting the string within the parens into valid *args and **kwargs to pass to functools.partial.</p>
  
  <p>Every list item is guaranteed to be valid Python.  I'm just unable to come up with a quick, easy way to convert strings such as 'arg1, arg2, 4, key=value' into somehthing functools.partial can use.  What am I missing?</p>
  
  <p>Update:</p>
  
  <p>My appologies.  I did forget vital information.  The args are not valid identifiers within the scope of this procedure, hence 'eval' doesn't work.  They are, however, correct in the scope in which the resulting partial objects will be used, so they can be "copied" as literals.
  My current procedure returns a string 'arg1, arg2, 4, this=that'.  If passed directly to functools.partial, functools.partial "wraps" it as a single string argument.</p>
  
  <p>Hmmm.. the more I describe this, the more I realize that there's no way to do this unless these identifiers are valid within this scope...</p>