Why does map return a map object instead of a list in Python 3?

I think the reason why map still exists at all when generator expressions also exist, is that it can take multiple iterator arguments that are all looped over and passed into the function:

>>> list(map(min, [1,2,3,4], [0,10,0,10]))
[0,2,0,4]

That's slightly easier than using zip:

>>> list(min(x, y) for x, y in zip([1,2,3,4], [0,10,0,10]))

Otherwise, it simply doesn't add anything over generator expressions.

Because it returns an iterator, it omit storing the full size list in the memory. So that you can easily iterate over it in the future not making any pain to memory. Possibly you even don't need a full list, but the part of it, until your condition is reached.

You can find this docs useful, iterators are awesome.

An object representing a stream of data. Repeated calls to the iterator’s __next__() method (or passing it to the built-in function next()) return successive items in the stream. When no more data are available a StopIteration exception is raised instead. At this point, the iterator object is exhausted and any further calls to its __next__() method just raise StopIteration again. Iterators are required to have an __iter__() method that returns the iterator object itself so every iterator is also iterable and may be used in most places where other iterables are accepted. One notable exception is code which attempts multiple iteration passes. A container object (such as a list) produces a fresh new iterator each time you pass it to the iter() function or use it in a for loop. Attempting this with an iterator will just return the same exhausted iterator object used in the previous iteration pass, making it appear like an empty container.