## 2.3   Sequences

A sequence is an ordered collection of data values. Unlike a pair, which has exactly two elements, a sequence can have an arbitrary (but finite) number of ordered elements.

The sequence is a powerful, fundamental abstraction in computer science. For example, if we have sequences, we can list every university in the world, or every student in every university. The sequence abstraction enables the thousands of data-driven programs that impact our lives every day.

A sequence is not a particular abstract data type, but instead a collection of behaviors that different types share. That is, there are many kinds of sequences, but they all share certain properties. In particular,

Length. A sequence has a finite length.

Element selection. A sequence has an element corresponding to any non-negative integer index less than its length, starting at 0 for the first element.

Unlike an abstract data type, we have not stated how to construct a sequence. The sequence abstraction is a collection of behaviors that does not fully specify a type (i.e., with constructors and selectors), but may be shared among several types. Sequences provide a layer of abstraction that may hide the details of exactly which sequence type is being manipulated by a particular program.

In this section, we introduce built-in Python types that implement the sequence abstraction. We then develop our own abstract data type that can implement the same abstraction.

### 2.3.1   Tuples

In fact, the tuple type that we introduced to form primitive pairs is itself a full sequence type. Tuples provide substantially more functionality than the pair abstract data type that we implemented functionally.

Tuples can have arbitrary length, and they exhibit the two principal behaviors of the sequence abstraction: length and element selection. Below, digits is a tuple with four elements.

>>> digits = (1, 8, 2, 8)
>>> len(digits)
4
>>> digits[3]
8


Additionally, tuples can be added together and multiplied by integers. For tuples, addition and multiplication do not add or multiply elements, but instead combine and replicate the tuples themselves. That is, the add function in the operator module (and the + operator) returns a new tuple that is the conjunction of the added arguments. The mul function in operator (and the * operator) can take an integer k and a tuple and return a new tuple that consists of k copies of the tuple argument.

>>> (2, 7) + digits * 2
(2, 7, 1, 8, 2, 8, 1, 8, 2, 8)


Multiple assignment and return values. In Chapter 1, we saw that Python allows multiple names to be assigned in a single statement.

>>> from math import pi
>>> area
314.1592653589793
>>> circumference
62.83185307179586


We can also return multiple values from a function.

>>> def divide_exact(n, d):
return n // d, n % d
>>> quotient, remainder = divide_exact(10, 3)
>>> quotient
3
>>> remainder
1


Python actually uses tuples to represent multiple values separated by commas. This is called tuple packing.

>>> digits = 1, 8, 2, 8
>>> digits
(1, 8, 2, 8)
>>> divide_exact(10, 3)
(3, 1)


Using a tuple to assign to multiple names is called, as one might expect, tuple unpacking. The names may or may not be enclosed by parentheses.

>>> d0, d1, d2, d3 = digits
>>> d2
2
>>> (quotient, remainder) = divide_exact(10, 3)
>>> quotient
3
>>> remainder
1


Multiple assignment is just the combination of tuple packing and unpacking.

Arbitrary argument lists. Tuples can be used to define a function that takes in an arbitrary number of arguments, such as the built-in print function. We precede a parameter name with a * to indicate that an arbitrary number of arguments can be passed in for that parameter. Python automatically packs those arguments into a tuple and binds the parameter name to that tuple..

>>> def add_all(*args):
"""Compute the sum of all arguments."""
total, index = 0, 0
while index < len(args):
total = total + args[index]
index = index + 1

>>> add_all(1, 3, 2)
6


In addition, we can use the * operator to unpack a tuple to pass its elements as separate arguments to a function call.

>>> pow(*(2, 3))
8


As illustrated in these examples, tuples support many of the features that we have been using in Python.

### 2.3.2   Sequence Iteration

In many cases, we would like to iterate over the elements of a sequence and perform a computational process for each in turn. This pattern is so common that Python has an additional control statement to process sequential data: the for statement.

Consider the problem of counting how many times a value appears in a sequence. We can implement a function to compute this count using a while loop.

>>> def count(s, value):
"""Count the number of occurrences of value in sequence s."""
total, index = 0, 0
while index < len(s):
if s[index] == value:
total = total + 1
index = index + 1

>>> count(digits, 8)
2


The Python for statement can simplify this function body by iterating over the element values directly, without introducing the name index at all.

>>> def count(s, value):
"""Count the number of occurrences of value in sequence s."""
total = 0
for elem in s:
if elem == value:
total = total + 1

>>> count(digits, 8)
2


A for statement consists of a single clause with the form:

for <name> in <expression>:
<suite>


A for statement is executed by the following procedure:

1. Evaluate the header <expression>, which must yield an iterable value.
2. For each element value in that sequence, in order:
1. Bind <name> to that value in the local environment.
2. Execute the <suite>.

Step 1 refers to an iterable value. Sequences are iterable, and their elements are considered in their sequential order. Python does include other iterable types, but we will focus on sequences for now; the general definition of the term "iterable" appears in the section on iterators in Chapter 4.

An important consequence of this evaluation procedure is that <name> will be bound to the last element of the sequence after the for statement is executed. The for loop introduces yet another way in which the local environment can be updated by a statement.

Sequence unpacking. A common pattern in programs is to have a sequence of elements that are themselves sequences, but all of a fixed length. For statements may include multiple names in their header to "unpack" each element sequence into its respective elements. For example, we may have a sequence of pairs (that is, two-element tuples),

>>> pairs = ((1, 2), (2, 2), (2, 3), (4, 4))


and wish to find the number of pairs that have the same first and second element.

>>> same_count = 0


The following for statement with two names in its header will bind each name x and y to the first and second elements in each pair, respectively.

>>> for x, y in pairs:
if x == y:
same_count = same_count + 1

>>> same_count
2


This pattern of binding multiple names to multiple values in a fixed-length sequence is called sequence unpacking; it is the same pattern that we see in assignment statements that bind multiple names to multiple values.

Ranges. A range is another built-in type of sequence in Python, which represents a range of integers. Ranges are created with range, which takes two integer arguments: the first number and one beyond the last number in the desired range.

>>> range(1, 10)  # Includes 1, but not 10
range(1, 10)


Calling the tuple constructor on a range will create a tuple with the same elements as the range, so that the elements can be easily inspected.

>>> tuple(range(5, 8))
(5, 6, 7)


If only one argument is given, it is interpreted as one beyond the last value for a range that starts at 0.

>>> tuple(range(4))
(0, 1, 2, 3)


Ranges commonly appear as the expression in a for header to specify the number of times that the suite should be executed:

>>> total = 0
>>> for k in range(5, 8):
total = total + k

>>> total
18


A common convention is to use a single underscore character for the name in the for header if the name is unused in the suite:

>>> for _ in range(3):
print('Go Bears!')

Go Bears!
Go Bears!
Go Bears!


This underscore is just another name in the environment as far as the interpreter is concerned, but has a conventional meaning among programmers that indicates the name will not appear in any expressions.

### 2.3.3   Sequence Abstraction

We have now introduced two types of native data types that implement the sequence abstraction: tuples and ranges. Both satisfy the conditions with which we began this section: length and element selection. Python includes two more behaviors of sequence types that extend the sequence abstraction.

Membership. A value can be tested for membership in a sequence. Python has two operators in and not in that evaluate to True or False depending on whether an element appears in a sequence.

>>> digits
(1, 8, 2, 8)
>>> 2 in digits
True
>>> 1828 not in digits
True


All sequences also have methods called index and count, which return the index of (or count of) a value in a sequence.

Slicing. Sequences contain smaller sequences within them. A slice of a sequence is any contiguous span of the original sequence, designated by a pair of integers. As with the range constructor, the first integer indicates the starting index of the slice and the second indicates one beyond the ending index.

In Python, sequence slicing is expressed similarly to element selection, using square brackets. A colon separates the starting and ending indices. Any bound that is omitted is assumed to be an extreme value: 0 for the starting index, and the length of the sequence for the ending index.

>>> digits[0:2]
(1, 8)
>>> digits[1:]
(8, 2, 8)


Enumerating these additional behaviors of the Python sequence abstraction gives us an opportunity to reflect upon what constitutes a useful data abstraction in general. The richness of an abstraction (that is, how many behaviors it includes) has consequences. For users of an abstraction, additional behaviors can be helpful. On the other hand, satisfying the requirements of a rich abstraction with a new data type can be challenging. Another negative consequence of rich abstractions is that they take longer for users to learn.

Sequences have a rich abstraction because they are so ubiquitous in computing that learning a few complex behaviors is justified. In general, most user-defined abstractions should be kept as simple as possible.

Further reading. Slice notation admits a variety of special cases, such as negative starting values, ending values, and step sizes. A complete description appears in the subsection called slicing a list in Dive Into Python 3. In this chapter, we will only use the basic features described above.

### 2.3.4   Nested Pairs

For rational numbers, we paired together two integer objects using a two-element tuple, then showed that we could implement pairs just as well using functions. In that case, the elements of each pair we constructed were integers. However, like expressions, tuples can nest. Either element of a pair can itself be a pair, a property that holds true for either method of implementing a pair that we have seen: as a tuple or as a dispatch function.

We visualize pairs (two-element tuples) in environment diagrams using box-and-pointer notation. Pairs are depicted as boxes with two parts: the left part contains (an arrow to) the first element of the pair and the right part contains the second. Simple values such as numbers, strings, boolean values, and None appear within the box. Composite values, such as function values and other pairs, are connected by a pointer.

numbers = (1, 2) pairs = ((1, 2), (3, 4))

We can use recursion to process an arbitrary nesting of pairs. For example, let's write a function to compute the sum of all integer elements in a nesting of pairs and integers.

def sum_elems(elem): if type(elem) == int: return elem else: return (sum_elems(elem[0]) + sum_elems(elem[1])) pairs = ((1, 2), (3, 4)) total = sum_elems(pairs)

The sum_elems function computes the sum of integer elements in a nested pair by recursively computing the sums of its first and second elements and adding the results. The base case is when an element is an integer, in which case the sum is the integer itself.

Our ability to use tuples as the elements of other tuples provides a new means of combination in our programming language. We call the ability for tuples to nest in this way a closure property of the tuple data type. In general, a method for combining data values satisfies the closure property if the result of combination can itself be combined using the same method. Closure is the key to power in any means of combination because it permits us to create hierarchical structures — structures made up of parts, which themselves are made up of parts, and so on. We will explore a range of hierarchical structures in Chapter 3. For now, we consider a particularly important structure.

### 2.3.5   Recursive Lists

We can use nested pairs to form lists of elements of arbitrary length, which will allow us to implement the sequence abstraction. The environment diagram below illustrates the structure of the recursive representation of a four-element list: 1, 2, 3, 4.

up_to_four = (1, (2, (3, (4, None))))

The list is represented by a chain of pairs. The first element of each pair is an element in the list, while the second is a pair that represents the rest of the list. The second element of the final pair is None, which indicates that the list has ended. This structure can be constructed using the nested tuple literal above.

This nested structure corresponds to a very useful way of thinking about sequences in general. A non-empty sequence can be decomposed into:

• its first element, and
• the rest of the sequence.

The rest of a sequence is itself a (possibly empty) sequence. We call this view of sequences recursive, because sequences contain other sequences as their second component.

Since our list representation is recursive, we will call it an rlist in our implementation, so as not to confuse it with the built-in list type in Python that we will discuss later. A recursive list can be constructed from a first element and the rest of the list. The value None represents an empty recursive list.

>>> empty_rlist = None
>>> def rlist(first, rest):
"""Construct a recursive list from its first element and the rest."""
return (first, rest)

>>> def first(s):
"""Return the first element of a recursive list s."""
return s[0]

>>> def rest(s):
"""Return the rest of the elements of a recursive list s."""
return s[1]


These two selectors, one constructor, and one constant together implement the recursive list abstract data type. The single behavior condition for a recursive list is that, like a pair, its constructor and selectors are inverse functions.

• If a recursive list s was constructed from element f and list r, then first(s) returns f, and rest(s) returns r.

We can use the constructor and selectors to manipulate recursive lists.

>>> counts = rlist(1, rlist(2, rlist(3, rlist(4, empty_rlist))))
>>> first(counts)
1
>>> rest(counts)
(2, (3, (4, None)))


Recall that we were able to represent pairs using functions, and therefore we can represent recursive lists using functions as well.

The recursive list can store a sequence of values in order, but it does not yet implement the sequence abstraction. Using the abstract data type we have defined, we can implement the two behaviors that characterize a sequence: length and element selection.

>>> def len_rlist(s):
"""Return the length of recursive list s."""
length = 0
while s != empty_rlist:
s, length = rest(s), length + 1
return length

>>> def getitem_rlist(s, i):
"""Return the element at index i of recursive list s."""
while i > 0:
s, i = rest(s), i - 1
return first(s)


Now, we can manipulate a recursive list as a sequence:

>>> len_rlist(counts)
4
>>> getitem_rlist(counts, 1)  # The second item has index 1
2


Both of these implementations are iterative. They peel away each layer of nested pair until the end of the list (in len_rlist) or the desired element (in getitem_rlist) is reached. We can also implement length and element selection using recursion.

>>> def len_rlist_recursive(s):
"""Return the length of a recursive list s."""
if s == empty_rlist:
return 0
return 1 + len_rlist_recursive(rest(s))

>>> def getitem_rlist_recursive(s, i):
"""Return the element at index i of recursive list s."""
if i == 0:
return first(s)
return getitem_rlist_recursive(rest(s), i - 1)

>>> len_rlist_recursive(counts)
4
>>> getitem_rlist_recursive(counts, 1)
2


These recursive implementations follow the chain of pairs until the end of the list (in len_rlist_recursive) or the desired element (in getitem_rlist_recursive) is reached.

Recursive lists can be manipulated using both iteration and recursion. In Chapter 3, however, we will see more complicated examples of recursive data structures that will require recursion to manipulate easily.

Let us return to the iterative way of implementing length and element selection. The series of environment diagrams below illustrate the iterative process by which getitem_rlist finds the element 2 at index 1 in the recursive list. Below, we have defined the rlist counts using Python primitives to simplify the diagrams. This implementation choice violate the abstraction barrier for the rlist data type, but allows us to inspect the computational process more easily for this example.

def first(s): return s[0] def rest(s): return s[1] def getitem_rlist(s, i): while i > 0: s, i = rest(s), i - 1 return first(s) counts = (1, (2, (3, (4, None)))) getitem_rlist(counts, 1)

First, the function getitem_rlist is called, creating a local frame.

def first(s): return s[0] def rest(s): return s[1] def getitem_rlist(s, i): while i > 0: s, i = rest(s), i - 1 return first(s) counts = (1, (2, (3, (4, None)))) getitem_rlist(counts, 1)

The expression in the while header evaluates to true, which causes the assignment statement in the while suite to be executed. The function rest returns the sublist starting with 2.

def first(s): return s[0] def rest(s): return s[1] def getitem_rlist(s, i): while i > 0: s, i = rest(s), i - 1 return first(s) counts = (1, (2, (3, (4, None)))) getitem_rlist(counts, 1)

Next, the local name s will be updated to refer to the sub-list that begins with the second element of the original list. Evaluating the while header expression now yields a false value, and so Python evaluates the expression in the return statement on the final line of getitem_rlist.

def first(s): return s[0] def rest(s): return s[1] def getitem_rlist(s, i): while i > 0: s, i = rest(s), i - 1 return first(s) counts = (1, (2, (3, (4, None)))) getitem_rlist(counts, 1)

This final environment diagram shows the local frame for the call to first, which contains the name s bound to that same sub-list. The first function selects the value 2 and returns it, which will also be returned from getitem_rlist.

This example demonstrates a common pattern of computation with recursive lists, where each step in an iteration operates on an increasingly shorter suffix of the original list. This incremental processing to find the length and elements of a recursive list does take some time to compute. (In Chapter 3, we will learn to characterize the computation time of iterative functions like these.) Python's built-in sequence types are implemented in a different way that does not have a large computational cost for computing the length of a sequence or retrieving its elements.

The way in which we construct recursive lists is rather verbose. Fortunately, Python provides a variety of built-in sequence types that provide both the versatility of the sequence abstraction, as well as convenient notation.

### 2.3.6   Strings

Text values are perhaps more fundamental to computer science than even numbers. As a case in point, Python programs are written and stored as text. The native data type for text in Python is called a string, and corresponds to the constructor str.

There are many details of how strings are represented, expressed, and manipulated in Python. Strings are another example of a rich abstraction, one which requires a substantial commitment on the part of the programmer to master. This section serves as a condensed introduction to essential string behaviors.

String literals can express arbitrary text, surrounded by either single or double quotation marks.

>>> 'I am string!'
'I am string!'
>>> "I've got an apostrophe"
"I've got an apostrophe"
>>> '您好'
'您好'


We have seen strings already in our code, as docstrings, in calls to print, and as error messages in assert statements.

Strings satisfy the two basic conditions of a sequence that we introduced at the beginning of this section: they have a length and they support element selection.

>>> city = 'Berkeley'
>>> len(city)
8
>>> city[3]
'k'


The elements of a string are themselves strings that have only a single character. A character is any single letter of the alphabet, punctuation mark, or other symbol. Unlike many other programming languages, Python does not have a separate character type; any text is a string, and strings that represent single characters have a length of 1.

Like tuples, strings can also be combined via addition and multiplication.

>>> 'Berkeley' + ', CA'
'Berkeley, CA'
>>> 'Shabu ' * 2
'Shabu Shabu '


Membership. The behavior of strings diverges from other sequence types in Python. The string abstraction does not conform to the full sequence abstraction that we described for tuples and ranges. In particular, the membership operator in applies to strings, but has an entirely different behavior than when it is applied to sequences. It matches substrings rather than elements.

>>> 'here' in "Where's Waldo?"
True


Likewise, the count and index methods on strings take substrings as arguments, rather than single-character elements. The behavior of count is particularly nuanced; it counts the number of non-overlapping occurrences of a substring in a string.

>>> 'Mississippi'.count('i')
4
>>> 'Mississippi'.count('issi')
1


Multiline Literals. Strings aren't limited to a single line. Triple quotes delimit string literals that span multiple lines. We have used this triple quoting extensively already for docstrings.

>>> """The Zen of Python


In the printed result above, the \n (pronounced "backslash en") is a single element that represents a new line. Although it appears as two characters (backslash and "n"), it is considered a single character for the purposes of length and element selection.

String Coercion. A string can be created from any object in Python by calling the str constructor function with an object value as its argument. This feature of strings is useful for constructing descriptive strings from objects of various types.

>>> str(2) + ' is an element of ' + str(digits)
'2 is an element of (1, 8, 2, 8)'


The mechanism by which a single str function can apply to any type of argument and return an appropriate value is the subject of the later section on generic functions.

Methods. The behavior of strings in Python is extremely productive because of a rich set of methods for returning string variants and searching for contents. A few of these methods are introduced below by example.

>>> '1234'.isnumeric()
True
>>> 'rOBERT dE nIRO'.swapcase()
'Robert De Niro'
>>> 'snakeyes'.upper().endswith('YES')
True


Further reading. Encoding text in computers is a complex topic. In this chapter, we will abstract away the details of how strings are represented. However, for many applications, the particular details of how strings are encoded by computers is essential knowledge. Sections 4.1-4.3 of Dive Into Python 3 provides a description of character encodings and Unicode.

### 2.3.7   Sequence Processing

Sequences are such a common form of compound data that one often organizes entire programs around this single abstraction. Representing all data in a program as sequences allows us to develop modular components that can be mixed and matched to perform data processing. That is, we can write several functions that all take a sequence as an argument and return a sequence as a value, then we can apply each to the output of the next in any order we choose. In this way, we can create a complex process by chaining together a pipeline of functions, each of which is simple and focused.

Two general sequence operations serve as the foundation of much data processing: map and filter.

Map. A powerful method of transforming sequences is by applying a function to each element and collecting the results. This general form of computation is called mapping a function over a sequence, and corresponds to the built-in map. The result of calling map is an object that is not itself a sequence, but can be converted into a sequence by calling tuple, the constructor function for tuples. The result can also be passed into other sequence processing operations.

>>> alternates = (-1, 2, -3, 4, -5)
>>> tuple(map(abs, alternates))
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)


Mapping is important because it relies on the sequence abstraction: we do not need to be concerned about the structure of the underlying tuple; only that we can access each one of its elements individually in order to pass it as an argument to the mapped function (abs, in this case). Other types of sequences, introduced shortly, can also serve as the second argument to map.

Filter. filter is also built into Python; it takes a sequence and returns those elements of that sequence for which a predicate is true.

>>> nums = (5, 6, -7, -8, 9)
>>> def even(n):
return n % 2 == 0
>>> tuple(filter(even, nums))
(6, -8)


Sequence operations can be nested as well.

>>> sum(filter(even, map(abs, nums)))
14


Consider these two problems, which appear at first to be related only in their use of sequences:

1. Sum the even members of the first n Fibonacci numbers.
2. List the letters in the acronym for a name, which includes the first letter of each capitalized word.

These problems are related because they can be decomposed into simple operations that take sequences as input and yield sequences as output. Moreover, those operations are instances of general methods of computation over sequences. Let's consider the first problem. It can be decomposed into the following steps:

 enumerate     map    filter  accumulate
-----------    ---    ------  ----------
naturals(n)    fib     even      sum


The fib function below computes Fibonacci numbers (now updated from the definition in Chapter 1 with a for statement),

>>> def fib(k):
"""Compute the kth Fibonacci number."""
prev, curr = 1, 0  # curr is the first Fibonacci number.
for _ in range(k - 1):
prev, curr = curr, prev + curr
return curr


Now we can implement even_fib, the solution to our first problem, in terms of map, filter, and sum. The predicate even was defined previously in this section.

>>> def sum_even_fibs(n):
"""Sum the even members of the firsT n Fibonacci numbers."""
return sum(filter(even, map(fib, range(1, n+1))))

>>> sum_even_fibs(20)
3382


Now, let's consider the second problem. It can also be decomposed as a pipeline of sequence operations that include map and filter:

enumerate     filter     map   accumulate
---------  -----------  -----  ----------
words    capitalized  first    tuple


The words in a string can be enumerated via the split method of a string object, which by default splits on spaces.

>>> tuple('Spaces between words'.split())
('Spaces', 'between', 'words')


The first letter of a word can be retrieved using the selection operator, and a predicate that determines if a word is capitalized can be defined using the built-in predicate isupper.

>>> def first(s):
return s[0]

>>> def capitalized(s):
return len(s) > 0 and s[0].isupper()


At this point, our acronym function can be defined via map and filter.

>>> def acronym(name):
"""Return a tuple of the letters that form the acronym for name."""
return tuple(map(first, filter(capitalized, name.split())))

>>> acronym('University of California Berkeley Undergraduate Graphics Group')
('U', 'C', 'B', 'U', 'G', 'G')


These similar solutions to rather different problems show how to combine general components that operate on sequences using the general computational patterns of mapping, filtering, and accumulation. The sequence abstraction allows us to specify these solutions concisely.

Expressing programs as sequence operations helps us design programs that are modular. Our designs are constructed by combining relatively independent pieces, each of which transforms a sequence. In general, we can encourage modular design by providing a library of standard components together with an assumption about data representation (e.g., that all inputs and outputs are sequences).

Generator expressions. The Python language includes a second approach to processing sequences, called generator expressions. which provide similar functionality to map and filter, but may require fewer function definitions.

Generator expressions combine the ideas of filtering and mapping together into a single expression type with the following form:

<map expression> for <name> in <sequence expression> if <filter expression>


To evaluate a generator expression, Python evaluates the <sequence expression>, which must return an iterable value. Then, for each element in order, the element value is bound to <name>, the filter expression is evaluated, and if it yields a true value, the map expression is evaluated.

The result value of evaluating a generator expression is itself an iterable value. Accumulation functions like tuple, sum, max, and min can take this returned object as an argument.

>>> def acronym(name):
return tuple(w[0] for w in name.split() if capitalized(w))

>>> def sum_even_fibs(n):
return sum(fib(k) for k in range(1, n+1) if fib(k) % 2 == 0)


Generator expressions are specialized syntax for sequence processing. These expressions subsume most of the functionality of map and filter, but avoid actually creating the function values that are applied (or, incidentally, creating the environment frames required to apply those functions).

Reduce. In our examples we used specific functions to accumulate results, either tuple or sum. Functional programming languages (including Python) include general higher-order accumulators that go by various names. Python includes reduce in the functools module, which applies a two-argument function cumulatively to the elements of a sequence from left to right, to reduce a sequence to a value. The following expression computes 5 factorial.

>>> from operator import mul
>>> from functools import reduce
>>> reduce(mul, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5))
120


Using this more general form of accumulation, we can also compute the product of even Fibonacci numbers, in addition to the sum, using our sequence processing techniques.

>>> def product_even_fibs(n):
"""Return the product of the first n even Fibonacci numbers, except 0."""
return reduce(mul, filter(even, map(fib, range(2, n+1))))

>>> product_even_fibs(20)
123476336640


The combination of higher order procedures corresponding to map, filter, and reduce will appear again in Chapter 4, when we consider methods for distributing computation across multiple computers.

Continue: 2.4 Mutable Data