Question

Say we have an array of objects representing people, produced by filtering the ancestry array somehow. But we want an array of names, which is easier to read.

The map method transforms an array by applying a function to all of its elements and building a new array from the returned values. The new array will have the same length as the input array, but its content will have been “mapped” to a new form by the function.

function map(array, transform) {
  var mapped = [];
  for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
    mapped.push(transform(array[i]));
  return mapped;
}

var overNinety = ancestry.filter(function(person) {
  return person.died - person.born > 90;
});
console.log(map(overNinety, function(person) {
  return person.name;
}));
// → ["Clara Aernoudts", "Emile Haverbeke",
//    "Maria Haverbeke"]

Interestingly, the people who lived to at least 90 years of age are the same three people who we saw before—the people who were young in the 1920s, which happens to be the most recent generation in my data set. I guess medicine has come a long way.

Like forEach and filter , map is also a standard method on arrays.

This is a book about getting computers to do what you want them to do. Computers are about as common as screwdrivers today, but they contain a lot more hidden complexity and thus are harder to operate and understand. To many, they remain alien, slightly threatening things.