Moving to functional programming

[Terry Reedy]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> James Fassett:
>> # the first Pythonic attempt using comprehensions
>> result_list = [x[0] for x in tuple_list]

This has the virtue of working for tuples of any length and doing the 
minimal work required.

>> # the final functional way
>> [result_list, _] = zip(*tuple_list)

This requires the tuples in tuple_list to be of length 2.  It also 
produces a second list that is then tossed away.

> The list comprehension is quite more readable to me, so I suggest you
> to use it. It's probably the default way to do it in Python.

It also has two virtues that the non-equivalent alternative lacks.

> If you want functional code this is another way (I have not tested the
> relative performance but it may be quick):
> 
>>>> tuple_list = (
> ...     ('John', 'Doe'),
> ...     ('Mark', 'Mason'),
> ...     ('Jeff', 'Stevens'),
> ...     ('Bat', 'Man')
> ...   )
>>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>>> map(itemgetter(0), tuple_list)
> ['John', 'Mark', 'Jeff', 'Bat']

This again makes just one list from tuples of any length.

Some of the other alternatives in another post do minimal work but only 
work with pairs.

tjr