Python Program to Find the Total Sum of a Nested List Using Recursion

Difficulty Level : Medium
Last Updated : 12 Mar, 2021

A nested list is given. The task is to print the sum of this list using recursion. A nested list is a list whose elements can also be a list.

Examples :

Input: [1,2,[3]]
Output: 6

Input: [[4,5],[7,8,[20]],100]
Output: 144

Input: [[1,2,3],[4,[5,6]],7]
Output: 28

Recursion: In recursion, a function calls itself repeatedly. This technique is generally used when a problem can be divided into smaller subproblems of the same form.

Implementation:

Iterate through the list and whenever we find that an element of the list is also a list that means we have to do the same task of finding sum with this element list (which can be nested) as well. So we have found a subproblem and, we can call the same function to perform this task and just changing the argument to this sublist. And when the element is not a list, then simply add its value to the global total variable.

Python3

# Python Program to find sum
# of nested list using Recursion
 
def sum_nestedlist( l ):
   
    # specify that global variable is
    # referred to here in this function
    total = 0
     
    for j in range(len(l)):
       
        if type(l[j]) == list :
           
            # call the same function if
            # the element is a list
            sum_nestedlist(l[j])
        else:
           
            # if it's a single element
            # and not a list, add it to total
            total += l[j]  
             
    return total
             
print(sum_nestedlist([[1,2,3],[4,[5,6]],7]))

Output:

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