Cool things you can do with map in python
What is a map() function?
The map() function will take two arguments one a function and another an iterable (list, tuple, etc), and performs the function passed to each item of the iterable and returns a map object.
The map object can take different types of functions. They are
- A normal function
- A lambda function
- A built-in function
- A filter function
The main purpose of using the map function is to perform operations on the iterables without manually having to iterate over them.
Let us look at some of the cool things we can do with map functions with different types of functions.
Map with normal functions
Square the numbers in the list using a normal function
In this example, we are calculating the square of a number using a separate function and returning it. The map() function will take this function as its first argument.
Remove punctuations with the map function
This example has a custom function that will take a string, remove all the punctuations in the string and return the string.
Map with lambda functions
A lambda function is a small anonymous function. A lambda function can take any number of arguments, but can only have one expression.
The syntax for a lambda function is,
lambda arguments : expressionSquare the numbers in the list using a lambda function
This example is similar to the first example but with a lambda function. This is more of a one-liner code.
Map function with two arguments
If we pass n sequences to map(), the function must take n number of arguments, and items from the sequences are consumed in parallel until the shortest sequence is exhausted.
Map function with built-in functions
We can also map() function with some of the built-in functions such as abs, round, len, etc.
Change the data type of the values
This code will take a list of numbers as strings and convert them to integers. This will come in handy when you are receiving input from the user for a list of integers.
Find the length of the string
We can also pass built-in functions to the map function. In this example, I have a list of strings. I need to find the length of each string. I can do something like this.
Using math functions with the map function
I can also import modules and use the methods provided by the module. In this example, I have used the ceil method from the math module to convert the list of integers to their next highest integer.
Round the values using the map function
In this example, I have used the round method to round the list of floating numbers to their closest previous integer value.
Generate a list of numbers
I can also generate a list of integers between any two values using the range method. In this example, I have generated a list of integers from 1 to 20 using the map() and range function.
Get absolute value of the numbers
In this example, I have used the abs method to convert all the numbers to a positive integer.
Map with filter
Sometimes you need to process an input iterable and return another iterable that results from filtering out unwanted values in the input iterable. In that case, Python’s filter() can be a good option for you. filter() is a built-in function that takes two positional arguments:
- The function will be a predicate or Boolean-valued function, a function that returns True or False according to the input data.
- Iterable will be any Python iterable.
Square of positive integers using map and filter
In this example, I am filtering only the positive integers first using the filter method and then finding the square of only those positive integers.
Conclusion
In this article, you learned what a map is and how to use map() with different types of methods. Hope this article was helpful. Follow me for more cool articles on python.
Happy coding!
