Console runs script that transform doesn't

[PGriffith]

deepcopy doesn't "know" how Perspective's internal objects work; it's a bigger hammer than you need.

Try the code in this post to directly convert to 'native' list and dict objects:

Function to convert json string or python dict into ObjectWrapper

Forcing each to the expected type while traversing makes a deep copy: def sanitize_tree(element): if hasattr(element, '__iter__'): if hasattr(element, 'keys'): return dict((k, sanitize_tree(element[k])) for k in element.keys()) else: return list(sanitize_tree(x) for x in element) return element EDIT: Got rid of the unnecessary zip() and used only one keys() iterator instead of two.