How to pass a function with more than one argument to python concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor.map()?

Question

I would like concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor.map() to call a function consisting of 2 or more arguments. In the example below, I have resorted to using a lambda function and defining ref as an array of equal size to numberlist with an identical value.

1st Question: Is there a better way of doing this? In the case where the size of numberlist can be million to billion elements in size, hence ref size would have to follow numberlist, this approach unnecessarily takes up precious memory, which I would like to avoid. I did this because I read the map function will terminate its mapping until the shortest array end is reach.

import concurrent.futures as cf

nmax = 10
numberlist = range(nmax)
ref = [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5]
workers = 3


def _findmatch(listnumber, ref):    
    print('def _findmatch(listnumber, ref):')
    x=''
    listnumber=str(listnumber)
    ref = str(ref)
    print('listnumber = {0} and ref = {1}'.format(listnumber, ref))
    if ref in listnumber:
        x = listnumber
    print('x = {0}'.format(x))
    return x 

a = map(lambda x, y: _findmatch(x, y), numberlist, ref)
for n in a:
    print(n)
    if str(ref[0]) in n:
        print('match')

with cf.ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=workers) as executor:
    #for n in executor.map(_findmatch, numberlist):
    for n in executor.map(lambda x, y: _findmatch(x, ref), numberlist, ref):
        print(type(n))
        print(n)
        if str(ref[0]) in n:
            print('match')

Running the code above, I found that the map function was able to achieve my desired outcome. However, when I transferred the same terms to concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor.map(), python3.5 failed with this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/multiprocessing/queues.py", line 241, in _feed
    obj = ForkingPickler.dumps(obj)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/multiprocessing/reduction.py", line 50, in dumps
    cls(buf, protocol).dump(obj)
_pickle.PicklingError: Can't pickle <function <lambda> at 0x7fd2a14db0d0>: attribute lookup <lambda> on __main__ failed

Question 2: Why did this error occur and how do I get concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor.map() to call a function with more than 1 argument?

Answer 1

To answer your second question first, you are getting an exception because a lambda function like the one you're using is not picklable. Since Python uses the pickle protocol to serialize the data passed between the main process and the ProcessPoolExecutor's worker processes, this is a problem. It's not clear why you are using a lambda at all. The lambda you had takes two arguments, just like the original function. You could use _findmatch directly instead of the lambda and it should work.

with cf.ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=workers) as executor:
    for n in executor.map(_findmatch, numberlist, ref):
        ...

As for the first issue about passing the second, constant argument without creating a giant list, you could solve this in several ways. One approach might be to use itertools.repeat to create an iterable object that repeats the same value forever when iterated on.

But a better approach would probably be to write an extra function that passes the constant argument for you. (Perhaps this is why you were trying to use a lambda function?) It should work if the function you use is accessible at the module's top-level namespace:

def _helper(x):
    return _findmatch(x, 5)

with cf.ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=workers) as executor:
    for n in executor.map(_helper, numberlist):
        ...