Nick Coghlan writes:
I'm actually half-tempted to suggest that [map, filter and reduce] should be aliased in the functional module for 2.5 (in addition to being in builtins - ala the contents of the exceptions module).
Well, I think it's a good idea, so I'll formally propose it! Let's alias map, filter, and reduce into the functional module now that it exists. This doesn't create any need or pressure to remove these as builtins, but it does contemplate a day when we might choose to make such a choice.
-1 map(), filter(), and zip() have already evolved into imap(), ifilter(), ifilterfalse(), and izip() which we already have in the itertools module. Introducing extra copies of the old list/builtin versions doesn't improve anyone's life. It adds bloat without adding new functionality. Also, someone else (Alex maybe) was proposing another module for functions that consume an iterator and return a scalar (like sum(), min(), max(), etc). The idea was to make some of the itertools recipes into a module (any, all, no, take, etc). If that happens, then there would be yet another possible home for reduce. If you want to add something new and useful to the functional module, try a compose() function. Raymond