Is “map” a loop?

Question

While answering this question, I came to realize that I was not sure whether Perl\'s map can be considered a loop or not?

On one hand, it quacks/walks l

Answer 1

"Loop" is more of a CS term rather than a language-specific one. You can be reasonably confident in calling something a loop if it exhibits these characteristics:

• iterates over elements
• does the same thing every time
• is O(n)

map fits these pretty closely, but it's not a loop because it's a higher-level abstraction. It's okay to say it has the properties of a loop, even if it itself isn't a loop in the strictest, lowest-level sense.