You want to flatten both regular and irregular lists of lists. Nested for loops could be used to solve this problem.
But are there any simpler solutions in Python?
The Python itertools
module is a simple and readable method for flattening regular lists of lists:
import itertools regular_list = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]] flat_list = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(regular_list)) print(flat_list)
Output:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Use list comprehension to flatten a regular list:
regular_list = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]] flat_list = [item for inner_list in regular_list for item in inner_list] print(flat_list)
Output:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Using nested loops might not be a shortcut, but this method is useful for flattening both regular and irregular lists of lists:
def flatten_list(list_of_lists): flattened_list = [] for element in list_of_lists: if type(element) is list: for item in element: flattened_list.append(item) else: flattened_list.append(element) return flattened_list # Regular list of lists regular_list_of_lists = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]] # Irregular list of lists irregular_list_of_lists = [1, [2, 3, 4], 5, [6, 7], 8, 9] print(flatten_list(regular_list_of_lists)) print(flatten_list(irregular_list_of_lists))
Output:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
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