Ytukyg

I've tried following the suggested answer here but did not get the intended result:
Python Socket Received ASCII convert to actual numbers (float)

I'm receiving data in bytes format like so, using socket.recv():

      b'(1,3,-121.551552,-123.602531,-40.582172,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)'

I'm trying to receive the values above as a list of 30 floats.

I understand we have to use the struct library but I'm facing difficulties trying to grasp the concept of formatting.

Your incoming floats aren't fixed-length, apart from having 6 decimal paces, if at all. So why not just use bytes.decode(), then strip off the brackets and then split on commas?

With each step broken down:

>>> b = b'(1,3,-121.551552,-123.602531,-40.582172,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)'

>>> b.decode()

'(1,3,-121.551552,-123.602531,-40.582172,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)'

>>> b.decode()[1:-1]

'1,3,-121.551552,-123.602531,-40.582172,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0'

>>> b.decode()[1:-1].split(',')

['1', '3', '-121.551552', '-123.602531', '-40.582172', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0',

 '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0']

>>> [float(x) for x in b.decode()[1:-1].split(',')]

[1.0, 3.0, -121.551552, -123.602531, -40.582172, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 

 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 

 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]

And a more Pythonic way to do that last one-step:

>>> list(map(float, b.decode()[1:-1].split(',')))

[1.0, 3.0, -121.551552, -123.602531, -40.582172, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,

 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]