map isn't particularly pythonic. I would recommend using list comprehensions instead:
map(f, iterable)
is basically equivalent to:
[f(x) for x in iterable]
map on its own can't do a Cartesian product, because the length of its output list is always the same as its input list. You can trivially do a Cartesian product with a list comprehension though:
[(a, b) for a in iterable_a for b in iterable_b]
The syntax is a little confusing -- that's basically equivalent to:
result = []
for a in iterable_a:
for b in iterable_b:
result.append((a, b))
Getting a map() to return a list in Python 3.x - Stack Overflow
What does list(map(int,input().split())) do in python?
DynamoDB, Python, adding a map to a list ... what am I doing wrong!
arr = map(int, input().split())
You don't create an array this way, you create an object that will provide you the objects once you iterate over them. Meaning as in a for loop
for v in arr:
do something with vor when you would create another sequence from it, like with list()
my_list = list(arr)
the point is that with a list you create a structure in RAM that will hold all the items upfront, which is often not what you actually need per se, so map allows you to simply define what you want (that takes no CPU or extra storage space) and only performs the actions when needed. If you do you need this as a list then a comprehension is preferable over map:
mylist = [int(n) for n in input.split()]
Sidenote: Python doesn't have a regular 'array', it has lists for ordered sequences that can be indexed. It does have specialized array for numerical values of a specific type but that's more oriented for low-level applications or for interfacing to other systems that need those kind of statically typed arrays.
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map isn't particularly pythonic. I would recommend using list comprehensions instead:
map(f, iterable)
is basically equivalent to:
[f(x) for x in iterable]
map on its own can't do a Cartesian product, because the length of its output list is always the same as its input list. You can trivially do a Cartesian product with a list comprehension though:
[(a, b) for a in iterable_a for b in iterable_b]
The syntax is a little confusing -- that's basically equivalent to:
result = []
for a in iterable_a:
for b in iterable_b:
result.append((a, b))
map doesn't relate to a Cartesian product at all, although I imagine someone well versed in functional programming could come up with some impossible to understand way of generating a one using map.
map in Python 3 is equivalent to this:
def map(func, iterable):
for i in iterable:
yield func(i)
and the only difference in Python 2 is that it will build up a full list of results to return all at once instead of yielding.
Although Python convention usually prefers list comprehensions (or generator expressions) to achieve the same result as a call to map, particularly if you're using a lambda expression as the first argument:
[func(i) for i in iterable]
As an example of what you asked for in the comments on the question - "turn a string into an array", by 'array' you probably want either a tuple or a list (both of them behave a little like arrays from other languages) -
>>> a = "hello, world"
>>> list(a)
['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', ',', ' ', 'w', 'o', 'r', 'l', 'd']
>>> tuple(a)
('h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', ',', ' ', 'w', 'o', 'r', 'l', 'd')
A use of map here would be if you start with a list of strings instead of a single string - map can listify all of them individually:
>>> a = ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
>>> list(map(list, a))
[['f', 'o', 'o'], ['b', 'a', 'r'], ['b', 'a', 'z']]
Note that map(list, a) is equivalent in Python 2, but in Python 3 you need the list call if you want to do anything other than feed it into a for loop (or a processing function such as sum that only needs an iterable, and not a sequence). But also note again that a list comprehension is usually preferred:
>>> [list(b) for b in a]
[['f', 'o', 'o'], ['b', 'a', 'r'], ['b', 'a', 'z']]
Do this:
list(map(chr,[66,53,0,94]))
In Python 3+, many processes that iterate over iterables return iterators themselves. In most cases, this ends up saving memory, and should make things go faster.
If all you're going to do is iterate over this list eventually, there's no need to even convert it to a list, because you can still iterate over the map object like so:
# Prints "ABCD"
for ch in map(chr,[65,66,67,68]):
print(ch)
New and neat in Python 3.5:
[*map(chr, [66, 53, 0, 94])]
Thanks to Additional Unpacking Generalizations
UPDATE
Always seeking for shorter ways, I discovered this one also works:
*map(chr, [66, 53, 0, 94]),
Unpacking works in tuples too. Note the comma at the end. This makes it a tuple of 1 element. That is, it's equivalent to (*map(chr, [66, 53, 0, 94]),)
It's shorter by only one char from the version with the list-brackets, but, in my opinion, better to write, because you start right ahead with the asterisk - the expansion syntax, so I feel it's softer on the mind. :)