import and export list: input and output do not match

Questions
,
1

Hi All

I am trying to export and then import a list; I woud like to obtain exactly the same list that I exported. I do this:

initial = {{{2013, 1, 2}, 41}, {{2013, 1, 3}, 42}};
initial // TableForm
Export["out.txt", initial, "List"];
final = Import["out.txt", "List"]
final // TableForm

and I get that “final” is different from “initial”, see the attached pdf. I tried all possible combinations of “List” and “Table” and nothing works.
I use Mathematica 9 on Mac OSX 10.9

Thanks for any help

Luca

2 
In[1]:= initial = {{{2013, 1, 2}, 41}, {{2013, 1, 3}, 42}};
initial >> "out.txt";
final = << "out.txt";
initial == final

Out[4]= True
3

Note that for your example the Import is returning a list of Strings rather than the actual list elements that you are desiring. (The explicit String characters are suppressed in Mathematica output by default.) Thus using the following will give you your original

final = ToExpression /@ Import["out.txt", "List"]
4

Thanks a lot to both!

I actually had tried before the solution suggested by Bill Simpson but forgot the equal sign in the
=<<
expression, so it didn’t work. Now is all fine.