counting items

[Andrew Koenig]

"It's me" <itsme at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:ukdFd.10645$5R.2000 at newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...

> What's the best way to count number of items in a list?
>
> For instance,
>
> a=[[1,2,4],4,5,[2,3]]
>
> I want to know how many items are there in a (answer should be 7 - I don't
> want it to be 4)

How about this?

    def totallen(x):
        if isinstance(x, (list, tuple, dict)):
            return sum(map(totallen, x))
        return 1