“Map” with more than one parameter and iterating without “for”

Question

1. Have the following line of code, which reads pairs of words from a file, splits them, and returns a tuple, where the first index of each tuple is either the first or second word. For example, a Bob, Smith will translate to [(Bob, Smith)] and [(Smith, Bob)] respectively. I map this to every pair in g.readlines().

   Was wondering if it was at all possible to pass a second parameter flip = True, into a more general word_flip() function which can be used with map?

   first_word_is_first = map(first_second_split, g.readlines())
   
   first_word_is_second = map(second_first_split, g.readlines())
   

2. A random question regarding a more functional approach, If I am given a string, and I would like to partition that string based on the attribute of each word (ie. Alex Smith AGE 35 420) is there a more functional way approach such a problem besides iterating through string.split() and dividing the line into str variables, name, age, room_number or using regex? Is it at all possible to use map, filter, or itertools? Would preferably pass through the string once.

Answer 1

1. Yes, you could use a functools.partial to add additional arguments to your function when using it in a map().

   from functools import partial
   first_word_is_first = map(partial(word_flip, flip=False), g.readlines())
   first_word_is_second = map(partial(word_flip, flip=True), g.readlines())
   

   It'll be easier to use a list comprehension though:

   first_word_is_first = [word_flip(l, flip=False) for l in g.readlines()]
   first_word_is_second = [word_flip(l, flip=True) for l in g.readlines()]
   

2. The way your string is structured (spaces both between fields and inside of the fields) you'll have to use a method like a regex or dedicated function to split out the fields.

Answer 2

for 2:

name, surname, n, age, room = 'Alex Smith AGE 35 420'.split()

return multiple results from method call.