Squaring all elements in a list

Question

I am told to

Write a function, square(a), that takes an array, a, of numbers and returns an array containing each of the values of a squared.

At first, I ha

Answer 1

Use a list comprehension (this is the way to go in pure Python):

>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> [i**2 for i in l]
[1, 4, 9, 16]

Or numpy (a well-established module):

>>> numpy.array([1, 2, 3, 4])**2
array([ 1,  4,  9, 16])

In numpy, math operations on arrays are, by default, executed element-wise. That's why you can **2 an entire array there.

Other possible solutions would be map-based, but in this case I'd really go for the list comprehension. It's Pythonic :) and a map-based solution that requires lambdas is slower than LC.