How to flatten a tuple in python

Question

I have the following element of a list, and the list is 100 elements long.

[(50, (2.7387451803816479e-13, 219))]

How do I convert each elem

Answer 1

Your could use the following function and apply it in a loop to every element in the list.

import type

def flatten(T):
    if type(T) != types.TupleType: return (T,)
    elif len(T) == 0: return ()
    else: return flatten(T[0]) + flatten(T[1:])

How it works:

• First it will be checked if type is tuple, if not, it "tuples" the argument
• Second line returns an empty tuple, if tuple is empty
• Third line gets out the first element and calls the function recursively

The nice thing in this solution is:

• It is not necessary to know the structure of the given tuple
• The tuple can be nested arbitrarily deep
• Works in Python 2.7

The code is slightly adapted from following source:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2001-April/005025.html

Hope it helps someone :)