Python – Map Function

The map() function is a built-in function.

map(function, iterable [, iterable2, iterable3,...iterableN]) --> map object

The map() function calls the specified function for each item of an iterable (such as string, list, tuple or dictionary) and returns a list of results.

Consider the following simple square function.

def square(x):
    return x*x

Now, we can call the map function with the list of numbers to get the list of results, as shown below.

>>> numbers=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> sqrList=map(square, numbers))
>>> next(sqrList)
1
>>> next(sqrList)
4
>>> next(sqrList)
9
>>> next(sqrList)
16
>>> next(sqrList)
25

In the above example, the map() function applies to each element in the numbers[] list.
This will return a map object which is iterable and so, we can use the next() function to traverse the list.

Map with Lambda Expression

The map() function passes each element in the list to the built-in function, a lambda function or a user-defined function, and returns the mapped object.
The following map() is used with the lambda function.

>>> sqrList = map(lambda x: x*x, [1, 2, 3, 4])
>>> next(sqrList)
1
>>> next(sqrList)
4
>>> next(sqrList)
9
>>> next(sqrList)
16
>>> next(sqrList)
25

Map with Built-in Function

In the following example, a built-in function pow() is given to map two list objects, one for each base and index parameter.
The result is a list containing the power of each number in bases raised to the corresponding number in the index.

>>> bases=[10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
>>> index=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> powers=list(map(pow, bases, index))
>>> powers
[10, 400, 27000, 2560000, 312500000]