I am trying to make a function which return max from nested list?

Question

I wrote this and its working fine with everything but when I have an empty list in a given list(given_list=[[],1,2,3]) it saying index is out of range. Any help?

Answer 1

that error indicates your index is out of range, which is the case with the first element of your example. The solution is not to iterate over lists of length zero:

def r_max (given_list):
    largest = given_list[0]
    while type(largest) == type([]):
        largest = largest[0]

    for element in given_list:
        if type(element) == type([]):
            # If the list is empty, skip
            if(len(elemnt) == 0)
                next
            max_of_elem = r_max(element)
            if largest < max_of_elem:
                largest = max_of_elem
        else:                           # element is not a list
            if largest < element:
                largest = element

    return larges

while your at it, you might want to assert len(given_list)>0 or something equivalent.