Getting a map() to return a list in Python 3.x

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. :)

Why aren't you doing this:

[chr(x) for x in [66,53,0,94]]

It's called a list comprehension. You can find plenty of information on Google, but here's the link to the Python (2.6) documentation on list comprehensions. You might be more interested in the Python 3 documenation, though.

List-returning map function has the advantage of saving typing, especially during interactive sessions. You can define lmap function (on the analogy of python2's imap) that returns list:

lmap = lambda func, *iterable: list(map(func, *iterable))

Then calling lmap instead of map will do the job: lmap(str, x) is shorter by 5 characters (30% in this case) than list(map(str, x)) and is certainly shorter than [str(v) for v in x]. You may create similar functions for filter too.

There was a comment to the original question:

I would suggest a rename to Getting map() to return a list in Python 3.* as it applies to all Python3 versions. Is there a way to do this? – meawoppl Jan 24 at 17:58

It is possible to do that, but it is a very bad idea. Just for fun, here's how you may (but should not) do it:

__global_map = map #keep reference to the original map
lmap = lambda func, *iterable: list(__global_map(func, *iterable)) # using "map" here will cause infinite recursion
map = lmap
x = [1, 2, 3]
map(str, x) #test
map = __global_map #restore the original map and don't do that again
map(str, x) #iterator