sum of nested list in Python

Question

I try to sum a list of nested elements

e.g, numbers=[1,3,5,6,[7,8]] should produce sum=30

I wrote the following code :

Answer 1

You need to use isinstance to check whether an element is a list or not. Also, you might want to iterate over the actual list, to make things simpler.

def nested_sum(L):
    total = 0  # don't use `sum` as a variable name
    for i in L:
        if isinstance(i, list):  # checks if `i` is a list
            total += nested_sum(i)
        else:
            total += i
    return total