Thanks to nHibernate, some of the data structures I work with are lists within lists within lists. So for example I have a data object called "category" which has a .Children property that resolves to a list of categories ... each one of which can have children ... and so on and so on.
I need to find a way of starting at a top-level category in this structure and getting a list or array or something similar of all the children in the entire structure - so all the children of all the children etc etc, flattened into a single list.
I'm sure it can be done with recursion, but I find recursive code a pain to work through, and I'm convinced there must be a more straightforward way in .Net 4 using Linq or somesuch - any suggestions?
Flatten List of Lists Using sum. Summing over inner lists is another solution. The function has two parameters: iterable which is a list of lists and start which is an empty list in our case that serves as the initial flat list to which items of the inner sublists are added.
To flatten a list of lists in Python, use the numpy library, concatenate(), and flat() function. Numpy offers common operations, including concatenating regular 2D arrays row-wise or column-wise.
Here's an extension method that does the job:
// Depth-first traversal, recursive public static IEnumerable<T> Flatten<T>( this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> childrenSelector) { foreach (var item in source) { yield return item; foreach (var child in childrenSelector(item).Flatten(childrenSelector)) { yield return child; } } }
You can use it like this:
foreach(var category in categories.Flatten(c => c.Children)) { ... }
The solution above does a depth-first traversal, if you want a breadth-first traversal you can do something like this:
// Breadth-first traversal, non-recursive public static IEnumerable<T> Flatten2<T>( this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> childrenSelector) { var queue = new Queue<T>(source); while (queue.Count > 0) { var item = queue.Dequeue(); yield return item; foreach (var child in childrenSelector(item)) { queue.Enqueue(child); } } }
It also has the benefit of being non-recursive...
UPDATE: Actually, I just thought of a way to make the depth-first traversal non-recursive... here it is:
// Depth-first traversal, non-recursive public static IEnumerable<T> Flatten3<T>( this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> childrenSelector) { LinkedList<T> list = new LinkedList<T>(source); while (list.Count > 0) { var item = list.First.Value; yield return item; list.RemoveFirst(); var node = list.First; foreach (var child in childrenSelector(item)) { if (node != null) list.AddBefore(node, child); else list.AddLast(child); } } }
I'm using a LinkedList<T>
because insertions are O(1) operations, whereas insertions to a List<T>
are O(n).
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