How to make a completely unshared copy of a complicated list? (Deep copy is not enough)

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To convert an existing list of lists to one where nothing is shared, you could recursively copy the list.

deepcopy will not be sufficient, as it will copy the structure as-is, keeping internal references as references, not copies.

def unshared_copy(inList):
    if isinstance(inList, list):
        return list( map(unshared_copy, inList) )
    return inList

alist = unshared_copy(your_function_returning_lists())

Note that this assumes the data is returned as a list of lists (arbitrarily nested).
If the containers are of different types (eg. numpy arrays, dicts, or user classes), you may need to alter this.

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