Why use the map() function?

Question

I was working with Python, and I noticed that the map() function doesn't really seem to do much. For instance, if I write the program:

mylist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
function = map(print, l)
print(function)

It provides no advantages over:

mylist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
for item in mylist:
    print(item)

In fact, the second option creates fewer variables and seems generally cleaner overall to me. I would assume that map() provides advantages that cannot be seen in an example as simplistic as this one, but what exactly are they?

EDIT: It seems that some people have been answering a different question than the one I intended to ask. The developers who made Python obviously put some work into creating the map() function, and they even decided NOT to take it out of 3.0, and instead continue working on it. What essential function did they decide it served?

Answer 1

It used to be more useful back before list comprehensions. You've probably seen code like

[int(x[2]) for x in l]

Back before list comprehensions, you'd write that as

map(lambda x: int(x[2]), l)

(This was also back before map returned an iterator.)

These days, list comprehensions and generator expressions handle most of what map used to do. map is still cleaner sometimes, particularly when you don't need a lambda. For example, some people prefer

map(str, l)

over

(str(x) for x in l)