python map string split list
Question: I am trying to map the `str.split` function to an array of string. namely, I
would like to split all the strings in a string array that follow the same
format. Any idea how to do that with `map` in python? For example let's assume
we have a list like this:

    
    
    >>> a = ['2011-12-22 46:31:11','2011-12-20 20:19:17', '2011-12-20 01:09:21']
    

want to split the strings by space ( split(" ")) using map to have a list as:

    
    
    >>> [['2011-12-22', '46:31:11'], ['2011-12-20', '20:19:17'], ['2011-12-20', '01:09:21']]
    


Answer: Though it isn't well known, there is a function designed just for this
purpose,
[operator.methodcaller](http://docs.python.org/library/operator.html#operator.methodcaller):

    
    
    >>> from operator import methodcaller
    >>> a = ['2011-12-22 46:31:11','2011-12-20 20:19:17', '2011-12-20 01:09:21']
    >>> map(methodcaller("split", " "), a)
    [['2011-12-22', '46:31:11'], ['2011-12-20', '20:19:17'], ['2011-12-20', '01:09:21']]
    

This technique is faster than equivalent approaches using lambda expressions.

