using index() on multidimensional lists

Question

For a one dimensional list, the index of an item is found as follows:

 a_list = [\'a\', \'b\', \'new\', \'mpilgrim\', \'new\']
 a_list.index(\'mpilgrim\')
         


        

Answer 1

For n-dimensional recursive search, you can try something like this:

from copy import copy
def scope(word, list, indexes = None):
    result = []
    if not indexes:
        indexes = []
    for index, item in enumerate(list):
        try:
            current_index = indexes + [index]
            result.append(current_index + [item.index(word)])
        except ValueError:
            pass

        if type(item[0]) == type([]):
            indexes.append(index)
            result.extend(scope(word, item, copy(indexes)))

    return result

And the result is:

>>> d_list = [['a', 'b', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'new'], [['a', 'b', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'new'], ['b', 'd', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'new']]]
>>> word = 'mpilgrim'
>>> result = scope(word, d_list)
[[0, 3], [1, 0, 3], [1, 1, 3]]

Probably there are better ways to do it, but that is the one I figured out without getting any library.

EDIT: Actually, it was not perfect and one library must be added. It's copy. Now it's ok.