code: def get_symbols_from_list(list_name):
      
      try:
          # quant software toolkit has a method for retrieving lists of symbols like S&P500 for 2012 with 'sp5002012'
          import QSTK.qstkutil.DataAccess as da
          dataobj = da.DataAccess('Yahoo')
      except ImportError:
          raise
      except:
          return []
      try:
          return dataobj.get_symbols_from_list(list_name)
      except:
          raise
docs: Retrieve a named (symbol list name) list of strings (symbols)
  
      If you've installed the QSTK Quantitative analysis toolkit
          `get_symbols_from_list('sp5002012')` will produce a list of the symbols that
          were members of the S&P 500 in 2012.
      Otherwise an import error exception will be raised.
          If the symbol list cannot be found you'll get an empty list returned
  
      Example:
        >> len(get_symbols_from_list('sp5002012')) in (0, 501)
        True