Question

I’d like to get a list where each item is set to a certain value (in my case, 0). I’ve solved this in my code with the code below, but it feels so messy. Surely there’s a better way?

maxWidths = map(lambda x: 0, range(0, maxCols))

Answer 1

Multiply a one-element list by the desired length.

maxWidths = [0] * maxCols

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In the above, all elements of the list will be the same objects.
In case you’re be creating a list of mutable values (such as dicts or lists), and you need them to be distinct, you can either use map as you did in the question, or write an equivalent list comprehension:

[[] for dummy in range(100)]