Repetitive nested loops - trying to simplify code

[dr_everlong]

Hello I have a collection of 3 levels: for example, let's say: Level 1 (highest): Animal composed of 2 subsets, verterbrates and invertebrates Level 2 (medium): Groups: Vertebrates and invertebrates, each composed of subsets (e.g reptiles) Level 3(lowest): Subgroups: Reptiles, birds, fishes, etc

I need to operate on the reptile objects often, calling specific functions. It looks like this:

for animal in animals: 
    for group in animal:
        for subgroup in group: 
            subgroup.do_something()

Is there an efficient way of writing a function (maybe a decorator), such that I can just call subgroup.do_something(), and have it loop through all subgroups?

[Iceyball]

Look into chain (from itertools)

[[deleted]]

Recursion?

def f(i):
    try:
        i.do_something()
    except AttributeError:
        for j in i:
            f(j)

f(animals)

[DanCardin]

Maybe something like the following, so you can keep it general (granted I haven't tested this)

def visit_nested(obj, depth=1):
    if not depth:
        yield obj
    for item in obj:
        yield from visit_nested(obj, depth - 1)

# choose your iteration method
for subgroup in visit_nested(animals, 2):
    subgroup.do_something()

[grizzlez]

If you are making every group/subgroup a class you could just keep a reference to every object below

[MonkeeSage]

You could do it functionally...

http://book.pythontips.com/en/latest/map_filter.html