[Chicago] Resolving lists within lists within lists within .....

Jonathan Helmus jjhelmus at gmail.com
Fri Feb 19 11:47:04 EST 2016


Or just use build-ins, cause who has time for the standard library.

eval('['+str(my_list).replace('[', '').replace(']', '')+']')

Cheers,

    - Jonathan Helmus

On 02/19/2016 10:42 AM, Aaron Elmquist wrote:
> Okay, that made my jaw drop. 
>
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:39 AM, JS Irick
> <hundredpercentjuice at gmail.com <mailto:hundredpercentjuice at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
>     I think we can agree that there is only one true solution:
>
>     >>> my_list
>
>     [1, 2, [1, 2, 3, [1, 2, 3, 4], 5], 4, 5]
>
>     >>> json.loads("["+re.sub('[\[\]]','',json.dumps(my_list))+"]")
>
>     [1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 5]
>
>
>     On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:05 AM, Aaron Elmquist <elmq0022 at umn.edu
>     <mailto:elmq0022 at umn.edu>> wrote:
>
>         That's still potentially a lot of list copying though, isn't it?
>
>         On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Aaron Elmquist
>         <elmq0022 at umn.edu <mailto:elmq0022 at umn.edu>> wrote:
>
>             Brad, that's a really cool approach and very readable. 
>             Thanks!
>
>             On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Brad Martsberger
>             <bradley.marts at gmail.com <mailto:bradley.marts at gmail.com>>
>             wrote:
>
>                 Aaron, Thanks for your example. One thing to point out
>                 is that popping from the front of a list is expensive
>                 because the entire list has to be copied. Some options
>                 are to flatten the list from the back (popping off the
>                 end of the list is cheap), or copying the list into a
>                 deque (from collections import deque).
>
>                 Here is another example of a non recursive version of
>                 flatten. It's not nearly as elegant as the recursive
>                 version. It's longer than Aaron's iterative version,
>                 but avoids hand manipulating the iteration over the
>                 lists (no popping or inserting).
>
>                 def press(lst):
>                     """
>                     Flattens nested lists one level
>
>                     Returns a tuple (new_list, changed) where changed
>                 is a boolean indicating
>                     whether new_list is different from lst.
>                     """
>                     changed = False
>                     new_list = []
>                     for element in lst:
>                         if isinstance(element, list):
>                             new_list.extend(element)
>                             changed = True
>                         else:
>                             new_list.append(element)
>
>                     return new_list, changed
>
>
>                 def flatten(lst):
>                     """
>                     Fully flattens nested lists into a list with no
>                 sublists
>                     """
>                     new_list = lst
>                     changed = True
>                     while changed:
>                         new_list, changed = press(new_list)
>                     return new_list
>
>                 On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:59 AM, Aaron Elmquist
>                 <elmq0022 at umn.edu <mailto:elmq0022 at umn.edu>> wrote:
>
>                     Here's one last approach that is stack based. 
>                     There is some clean up to do here for sure (I'm
>                     mutating the original list for one), but the point
>                     is to illustrate an approach that is not recursive. 
>
>                     def flatten_big_list(lst):
>                         stack = []
>                         while(lst):
>                             top = lst.pop(0)
>                             while(isinstance(top,list)):
>                                 temp = top.pop(0)
>                                 if top:
>                                     lst.insert(0,top)
>                                 top = temp
>                             stack.append(top)
>                         return stack
>
>
>                     def flatten_big_list_gen(lst):
>                         while(lst):
>                             top = lst.pop(0)
>                             while(isinstance(top,list)):
>                                 temp = top.pop(0)
>                                 if top:
>                                     lst.insert(0,top)
>                                 top = temp
>                             yield top
>
>
>                     print(flatten_big_list([1, [2, [3, [4, 5]]]]))
>                     print(list(flatten_big_list_gen([1, [2, [3, [4,
>                     5]]]])))
>
>                     Feedback is always welcome. 
>
>
>                     On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 9:29 PM, Mark Graves
>                     <mgraves87 at gmail.com <mailto:mgraves87 at gmail.com>>
>                     wrote:
>
>                         Doug,
>
>                         Also, I didn't see your question get answered.
>
>                         "The" answer to why is recursion expensive vs
>                         iteration is stack traces.  See Guido's
>                         answer here
>                         <https://t.yesware.com/tt/6640a48a14dbdef70b47105ac6b72156559fc5a6/5ba2375237a9fdc8efa681b19014981f/d6c3025efb0710ebe9f6fa425f843d2c/plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts/HajXHPGN752> or
>                         try it yourself as mentioned here
>                         <http://t.yesware.com/tt/6640a48a14dbdef70b47105ac6b72156559fc5a6/5ba2375237a9fdc8efa681b19014981f/dda1509570b2b5d9d162e6293a1b3f07/stackoverflow.com/questions/22893139/why-is-a-function-method-call-in-python-expensive>.
>
>                         Recursion means creating more functions /
>                         stack traces.
>
>                         On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Adam Forsyth
>                         <adam at adamforsyth.net
>                         <mailto:adam at adamforsyth.net>> wrote:
>
>                             Phil,
>
>                             That's generally true, but one small
>                             correction. Aaron's solution won't
>                             actually won't flatten strings, as they
>                             don't have "__iter__" methods. They
>                             implement iteration because they take
>                             sequential numeric indexes starting at 0,
>                             and raise an IndexError after the index
>                             passed is too large.
>
>                             Adam
>
>                             On Feb 18, 2016 19:22, "Robare, Phillip
>                             (TEKSystems)" <proba at allstate.com
>                             <mailto:proba at allstate.com>> wrote:
>
>                                 Aaron, unlike Massimo’s elegant
>                                 one-liner you don’t check that what
>                                 you are iterating over is a list. 
>                                 Since Python will happily iterate over
>                                 strings, dictionaries, and much more
>                                 you quickly get into problems when the
>                                 list includes more types than lists
>                                 and numbers.  I recount this from
>                                 experience when I tried to throw
>                                 together a flatten routine and pass it
>                                 a data structure that I got from
>                                 loading a JSON string.
>
>                                  
>
>                                 Phil Robare
>
>                                  
>
>                                     *<snip/>*
>
>                                      
>
>                                     On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 1:43 PM,
>                                     Aaron Elmquist <elmq0022 at umn.edu
>                                     <mailto:elmq0022 at umn.edu>> wrote:
>
>                                         Douglas,
>
>                                         Here's one more version for
>                                         you and the rest of the list.
>                                         It's based on Brad's code.  I
>                                         will let you think about why
>                                         this version might be better
>                                         or worse.  Also, recursion is
>                                         great.  It's just too bad it's
>                                         not one of python's strong points.
>
>
>                                         def flatten(lst):
>                                             for item1 in lst:
>                                                 if hasattr(item1,
>                                         '__iter__'):
>                                                     for item2 in
>                                         flatten(item1):
>                                                         yield item2
>                                                 else:
>                                                     yield item1
>                                                    
>                                         print([x for x in flatten([1,
>                                         [2,3,[4,5,6,[7,8,9]]]]) if x%2
>                                         == 1])
>
>                                         y = flatten([1,
>                                         [2,3,[4,5,6,[7,8,9]]]])
>
>                                         print(next(y))
>                                         print(next(y))
>                                         print(next(y))
>                                         .
>                                         .
>                                         .
>                                         <snip/>
>
>                                             On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at
>                                             9:48 PM, DiPierro, Massimo
>                                             <MDiPierro at cs.depaul.edu
>                                             <mailto:MDiPierro at cs.depaul.edu>>
>                                             wrote:
>
>                                                 here is a one liner:
>
>                                                 def flatten(x):
>                                                     return [z for y in
>                                                 x for z in flatten(y)]
>                                                 if isinstance(x,list)
>                                                 else [x]
>
>
>
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>     -- 
>     ====
>     JS Irick
>     312-307-8904 <tel:312-307-8904>
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