How to Transform List Elements with the Python map() Function

09/13/2021

Contents

In this article, you will learn how to transform list elements with the Python map() function.

How to Transform List Elements

The map() function in Python is a built-in function that allows you to apply a function to each element of an iterable (e.g., list, tuple, etc.) and returns a new iterable with the results.

To transform list elements with the map() function in Python, you can follow these steps:

  1. Define a function that performs the transformation you want. This function should take an element of the iterable as an input and return the transformed element.

    For example, let’s say you have a list of integers and you want to square each element. You can define a function called square that takes an integer as an input and returns the square of that integer:

    def square(x):
    return x**2

  2. Use the map() function to apply the function to each element of the list. The map() function takes two arguments: the function to apply and the iterable to apply it to.

    For example, you can use the map() function to apply the square() function to each element of a list of integers:

    my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
squared_list = list(map(square, my_list))

  3. The map() function returns an iterator, so you need to convert it to a list using the list() function.

    In the above example, the map() function returns an iterator with the squared values of each element in my_list. We then use the list() function to convert the iterator into a list and store the result in squared_list.

    The resulting squared_list will be [1, 4, 9, 16, 25], which is the original list with each element squared.

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