Suppose I have a bulleted list like this: * list item 1 * list item 2 (a parent) ** list item 3 (a child of list item 2) ** list item 4 (a child of list item 2 as well) *** list item 5 (a child of list item 4 and a grand-child of list item 2) * list item 6 I'd like to parse that into a nested list or some other data structure which makes the parent-child relationship between elements explicit (rather than depending on their contents and relative position). For example, here's a list of tuples containing an item and a list of its children (and so forth): [('list item 1',), ('list item 2', [('list item 3',), [('list item 4', [('list item 5'),]] ('list item 6',)] I've attempted to do this with plain Python and some experimentation with Pyparsing, but I'm not making progress. I'm left with two major questions: What's the strategy I need to employ to make this work? I know recursion is part of the solution, but I'm having a hard time making the connection between this and, say, a Fibonacci sequence. I'm certain I'm not the first person to have done this, but I don't know the terminology of the problem to make fruitful searches for more information on this topic. What problems are related to this so that I can learn more about solving these kinds of problems in general?