Question

I’m trying to merge two lists if they contain a certain word.

My code works fine until I try to transfer it to under a function or under a for loop.
When I do I get:

TypeError: argument 2 to map() must support iteration

I also tried replacing map(None, a,b) with itertools.imap(None, a,b) as suggested in other posts but get :

TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable

Any suggestions?

a = 0
b = 0
row_combine = []
for row in blank3:

    if 'GOVERNMENTAL' in row:
        a = row
    if 'ACTIVITIES' in row:
        b = row
c = map(None, a,b) #problem is here
for row in c:
    row1 = []
    if row[0] == None:
        row1.append(''.join([''] + [row[1]]))
    else:
        row1.append(''.join([row[0]] + [' '] + [row[1]]))
    row_combine.append(''.join(row1)) 

output for a:

a = [' ', u'GOVERNMENTAL', u'BUSINESS-TYPE']

output for b:

b = [u'ASSETS', u'ACTIVITIES', u'ACTIVITIES', u'2009', u'2008', u'JEDO']

need it to be:

[ u'ASSETS', u'GOVERNMENTAL ACTIVITIES', u'BUSINESS-TYPE ACTIVITIES', u'2009', u'2008', u'JEDO']

hence the for for loop after map function.

Answer 1

If after iterating through blank3 you never encounter both ‘GOVERNMENTAL’ and ‘ACTIVITIES’, a or b could be 0, which will cause map to fail. You could start a and b off as empty lists, or check your input before the map()

Meanwhile, instead of the for loop:

row_combine = map(lambda x, y: ((x or '') + ' ' + (y or '')).strip(), a, b)

Which yields:

[u'ASSETS', u'GOVERNMENTAL ACTIVITIES', u'BUSINESS-TYPE ACTIVITIES', u'2009', u'2008', u'JEDO']