string to list and back again as same type

[Skaperen]

i was playing around with ...

    original_string[0:0].join(temp_list)

... or ...

 temp_list[0][0:0].join(temp_list)

... under the assumption that the items in the list were strings of the same type. for some things, like slicing in-place, this should be enough. for others, i might need to make the items in the list be some common form, such as only string, or as only int. it looks like in this case i might need to have blocks of code for various types.