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

When trying one the the other answers, the function was unable to recurse, and so I modified it to not recurse. It still works quite quickly, and can handle large nested lists (at least as far as I can tell with my testing). It is a Python 3 only function.

# Originally by Bruno Polaco
def traverse(item, reverse=False):
    its = [item] #stack of items to-be-processed
    out = [] # Output (no longer generator)
    ite = False
    while len(its) > 0:
        it = its.pop()
        try: # Check if item is iterable
            iter(it)
            ite = not isinstance(it, str)
        except TypeError:
            ite = False
        if ite: # Do something with it
            for i in it:
                its.append(i)
        else:
            out.append(it)
    if not reverse:
        out.reverse()
    return out