Appending an id to a list if not already present in a string

What you are trying to do can almost certainly be achieved with a set.

>>> x = set([1,2,3])
>>> x.add(2)
>>> x
set([1, 2, 3])
>>> x.add(4)
>>> x.add(4)
>>> x
set([1, 2, 3, 4])
>>> 

using a set’s add method you can build your unique set of ids very quickly. Or if you already have a list

unique_ids = set(id_list)

as for getting your inputs in numeric form you can do something like

>>> ids = [int(n) for n in '350882 348521 350166\r\n'.split()]
>>> ids
[350882, 348521, 350166]