Ggtcf

I have various complex lists such as

lista = [3,4,[5,[1,2],0]
listb = [[3,4],0,[1,5],2]

I need to find the position of the items in the top list. My output would be item, index for the first list:

0 3
1 2
2 2
3 0
4 1
5 2

So 5,1,2 are in position 3.

In the other list:

0 1
1 2
2 3
3 0
4 0
5 2

The number of sublists can vary and each sublist can have sublists.

In order to simplify, I have searched for any list with a "," and flatted that into 1 sublist.

I could have a list of individual elements and lists but I could not get the indexes. I also tried converting the individual elements into a single item list and appending it but I still cannot get the index of the sublist.

You can use a function that flattens a given list by iterating through the list items and recursively flattens an item if it is a list. Use the enumerate function to generate list indices and output them as the second item of a tuple:

def flatten(l):
 return [(n, i) for i, v in enumerate(l) for n, _ in (flatten(v) if isinstance(v, list) else ((v, 0),))]

so that given:

lista=[3,4,[5,[1,2]],0]
listb=[[3,4],0,[1,5],2]

the following:

print(flatten(lista))
print(flatten(listb))

will output:

[(3, 0), (4, 1), (5, 2), (1, 2), (2, 2), (0, 3)]
[(3, 0), (4, 0), (0, 1), (1, 2), (5, 2), (2, 3)]

or if you prefer the output to be sorted by the item values:

print(sorted(flatten(lista)))
print(sorted(flatten(listb)))

will output:

[(0, 3), (1, 2), (2, 2), (3, 0), (4, 1), (5, 2)]
[(0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 0), (4, 0), (5, 2)]

You could use a function like this:

def find_index(val, lst):
 for i, x in enumerate(lst):
 if val == x:
 return i
 elif type(x) is list: # or type(x) not in float, int
 try:
 find_index(val, x)
 # matched without error
 return i
 except ValueError:
 # not in list
 pass
 # not found
 raise ValueError(' is not in the list'.format(val))

This uses the enumerate function to get items and their indexes from the list. Then it tests each item directly against the required value if possible. If the item is a list, it checks that recursively instead.

Test:

lst = [[3, 4], 0, [1, [5]], 2]
for x in range(6):
 print x, find_index(x, lst)

# 0 1
# 1 2
# 2 3
# 3 0
# 4 0
# 5 2

If you want to be able to work with any type of iterable (not just lists), you could try this more general code, but it's harder to follow:

def find_index(val, values):
 try:
 # Search list of items
 for i, x in enumerate(values):
 try:
 find_index(val, x) # any error?
 return i # succeeded
 except ValueError:
 pass
 except TypeError:
 # not a list, just an item
 if values == val:
 return 0 # found
 # not found
 raise ValueError(' is not in the list'.format(val))