iterate python nested lists efficiently

Question

I am working on a network traffic monitor project in Python. Not that familiar with Python, so I am seeking help here.

In short, I am checking both in and out traff

Answer 1

Apart from minor fixes on your code (the issues raised by @Zero Piraeus), your question was probably answered here. A possible code to traverse a list of lists in N degree (a tree) is the following:

def traverse(item):
    try:
        for i in iter(item):
            for j in traverse(i):
                yield j
    except TypeError:
        yield item

Example:

l = [1, [2, 3], [4, 5, [[6, 7], 8], 9], 10]
print [i for i in traverse(l)]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

The key to make it work is recursion and the key to make it work efficiently is using a generator (the keyword yield gives the hint). The generator will iterate through your list of lists an returning to you item by item, without needing to copy data or create a whole new list (unless you consume the whole generator assigning the result to a list, like in my example)

Using iterators and generators can be strange concepts to understand (the keyword yield mainly). Checkout this great answer to fully understand them