Author: Divyanshu aka StellarCoder
Python 2.x
This is third article of the series--> Python Diaries (Python 2.x)
Link for second article --> Python Diaries chapter 2

In previous article we discussed print methods, input methods and string manipulation in detail. In this article we will cover for-else loop,filter function,list comprehension,map function and lambda function. This one will be a little bit tricky but I will try to keep things as simple as possible.

For-else Loop

Have you ever used flag in your program? If yes, you will be able to relate it with for-else Loop.

flag is an 'indicator' variable. It tells us about whether a event took place or not.

Let me clarify it through an example.

Question: print whether zero is present in the array 'arr'.If 0 is present, print "Zero is present in the array", otherwise print "Zero is not present in the array" arr=[10,20,30,40,50,0,60,70,80,90]

Solution:

arr=[10,20,30,40,50,0,60,70,80,90]
flag=0
for item in arr:
    if item==0:
        flag=1

if flag==1:
    print "Zero is present in the array"
else:
    print "Zero is not present in the array"

We could have done this question without the flag also, but I wanted to show you the usage of the flag.

Now let us see how to approach above problem using for-else loop. The 'for-else' loop works in the same way as the 'for' loop but it has an extra 'else' part which gets executed if no 'break' is given in the 'for' part the 'for-else' loop.

program 1

arr=[10,20,30,40,50,0,60,70,80,90]
for item in arr:
    if item==0:
        print "Zero is present"
        break
else:
    print "Zero is not present in the array"

Output -> Zero is present in the array

Note--> If we had not used the break statement then the else block would have also got executed and the output would have been

Output->
Zero is present in the array
Zero is not present in the array

Functions

syntax-->

def name_of_function(arguments_separated_by_comma):
    your code/logic
    return whatever_you_want_to
    # returning something is not compulsory

def sum_of_numbers(a,b):
    c=a+b
    return c

print sum_of_numbers(2,3)

Output-->5

List comprehension

List comprehension is a way to define and create list. suppose, for numbers 1 to 10, you want to create a list which has squares of these numbers ie. [1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100]

Now to create that list we will use list comprehension
syntax-->
array_name = [expression(i) for i in old_array_name if filter(i)]
or
[ expression for item in list if conditional ]

expression is the operation you want to perform on 'i', it can be function or any simple expression. then we loop through items present in the given list using which we will make new list or we can use range() to make the list.
If conditional is optional to filter the elements.

Let us see some examples

program 1

list_of_squares=[x**2 for x in range(1,11)]

Output--> [1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100]

program 2

# List of squares of odd numbers
 list_of_squares=[x**2 for x in range(1,11) if x%2==1]

Output-->[1, 9, 25, 49, 81]

program 3

def quadratic(x):
    y=x**2 + 5*x + 9
    return y

list_of_quadratic=[quadratic(x) for x in range(4,9)]

Output-->[45, 59, 75, 93, 113]

and so on.....

We can also use list comprehension to create multi-dimesional arrays, check the following link for the same https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html

MAP

It applies the function to every item of iterable(list,tuple etc..) and returns a list of the results.

Syntax of map function ->
map(function, iterable[,optional args])

Function can be a normal function or a lambda function.
Lambda function is a function which doesn't have name ie.Anonymous Function.

Example of Lambda function

magic=lambda x:x**2 + 5*x + 9
magic(4)

Output--> 45

Syntax of lambda function
first of all write 'lambda' then a dummy variable('x' in our case) and then the expression separated by colon.

Now let us look at some examples of map function

Program 1

arr=range(1,10)
list_of_quadratics=map(lambda x:x**2+ 5*x + 9,arr)
print list_of_quadratics
#Default return data type of map is list, so no need of using square brackets '[ ]' or 'list()'

Output--> [15, 23, 33, 45, 59, 75, 93, 113, 135]

Program 2

#Converts string to uppercase
def To_Upper_Case(x):
    x=x.upper()
    return x

arr=['harvey','specter','is','awesome']
our_array=map(To_Upper_Case,arr)
print our_array

Output-->['HARVEY', 'SPECTER', 'IS', 'AWESOME']

Filter

It returns a list of those elements for which the function used/passed returns True and filters out the value which return False or None.

Syntax
filter(function,iterable)
Again function can be lambda also.

Examples of filter function

Program 1

arr=range(1,60)
final_list=filter(lambda x:x>50,arr)
print final_list

Output--> [51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59]

Program 2

arr=range(1,20)
final_array=filter(lambda x:x%2==1,arr)
print final_array

Output-> [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19]

Similarly, you can customize function and list according to your requirement and use combination of filter function,lambda functions, map function and list comprehension.