Issue 538

[appukuttan-shailesh]

Fixes parts 1 and 2 of issue #538.

@apdavison : The original code has this bit:

                try:
                    D[name] = eval(value)
                except Exception:
                    D[name] = value.strip()

Is there any reason to retain the "strip()" part. I have removed this currently. eval() seemed to work fine with extra whitespaces at the ends.

[coveralls]

Coverage decreased (-11.8%) to 42.535% when pulling 9add5f5 on appukuttan-shailesh:issue_538 into 215e74b on NeuralEnsemble:master.

[coveralls]

Coverage increased (+0.01%) to 54.317% when pulling 640c21a on appukuttan-shailesh:issue_538 into 215e74b on NeuralEnsemble:master.