Flatten a list of strings and lists of strings and lists in Python [duplicate]

Answer 1

The following works for strings (and would be easily adapted to other types):

def flatten_to_strings(listOfLists):
    """Flatten a list of (lists of (lists of strings)) for any level 
    of nesting"""
    result = []

    for i in listOfLists:
        # Only append if i is a basestring (superclass of string)
        if isinstance(i, basestring):
            result.append(i)
        # Otherwise call this function recursively
        else:
            result.extend(flatten_to_strings(i))
    return result

flatten_to_strings(list_of_menuitems)
Out[2]: ['image10', 'image00', 'image01', 'image02', 'image03', 'image04']