Python: How to check if a nested list is essentially empty?

Question

Is there a Pythonic way to check if a list (a nested list with elements & lists) is essentially empty? What I mean by

Answer 1

If you do not need to iterate through the lists, simpler is better, so something like this will work:

def empty_tree(input_list):
    """Recursively iterate through values in nested lists."""
    for item in input_list:
        if not isinstance(item, list) or not empty_tree(item):
             return False
    return True

However, it would be good to separate the recursive iteration that you will most probably reuse elsewhere and checking that it returns no elements. This way if the mechanism of iteration changes you need to implement the change in one place. For instance when you need to support arbitrary nested iterables, or nested dicts.

def flatten(input_list):
    """Recursively iterate through values in nested lists."""
    for item in input_list:
        if isinstance(item, list): # Use what ever nesting condition you need here
            for child_item in flatten(item):
                yield child_item
        else:
            yield item

def has_items(seq):
    """Checks if an iterator has any items."""
    return any(1 for _ in seq)

if not has_items(flatten(my_list)):
    pass