Converting Strings to Integers in a List

In programming, we often encounter lists containing string elements that need to be converted into integers. This question addresses this problem specifically, considering how to transform all strings in a list to their respective integer values.

Solution:

To achieve this conversion, Python provides two essential functions: map and int. The map function applies a given function to each element in a sequence, returning a new sequence with the results. In this case, the function we apply is int, which converts a string representation of an integer to its integer equivalent.

For example, consider the list xs = ['1', '2', '3']. To convert all elements to integers, we can utilize the following code:

list(map(int, xs))  # Returns [1, 2, 3]

The int function takes care of the conversion, and the map function iterates over the elements and applies the conversion to each. The resulting list contains the converted integers.

Note for Python 2:

In Python 2, the map function returned a list by default, so the list cast is unnecessary. The following code would suffice:

map(int, xs)  # Returns [1, 2, 3]