Counting depth or the deepest level a nested list goes to

python list nested levels
dhcarmona picture dhcarmona · May 18, 2011 · Viewed 25k times · Source

A have a real problem (and a headache) with an assignment...

I'm in an introductory programming class, and I have to write a function that, given a list, will return the "maximum" depth it goes to... For example: [1,2,3] will return 1, [1,[2,3]] will return 2...

I've written this piece of code (it's the best I could get T_T)

def flat(l):
    count=0
    for item in l:
        if isinstance(item,list):
            count+= flat(item)
    return count+1

However, It obviously doens't work like it should, because if there are lists that do not count for the maximum deepness, it still raises the counter...

For example: when I use the function with [1,2,[3,4],5,[6],7] it should return 2, but it returns 3...

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated ^^ thanks a lot!! I've been strugling with this for weeks now...

Answer

John La Rooy picture John La Rooy · May 18, 2011

Here is one way to write the function

depth = lambda L: isinstance(L, list) and max(map(depth, L))+1

I think the idea you are missing is to use max()

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