Recursive list count

Question

I got the school assignment, where I need to count several lists in f.e. this list:

['a', ['house', [2], 3], [], [[[2]]], 'b']

I wanted to do without using global.
I tried doing this:

def zoznam_prvkov(zoznam):
    z = []
    for i in range(len(zoznam)):
        if isinstance(zoznam[i], list) == False:
            z.append(zoznam[i])
        else:
            zoznam_prvkov(zoznam[i])
    return z

But that returns only [1, 2, 3, 6, 8] 

Answer 1

If the item is not the list, then return 0, otherwise count it as the list and sum up your counts of all the items:

def count_lists(x):

    if not isinstance(x, list):

        return 0

    return 1 + sum(count_lists(item) for item in x)

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