Add functions to map an array into an object

[bruceg]

When manipulating data that has been parsed from CSV or other columnar data sources, it is useful to be able to map those columns into an object with named fields. I propose adding two functions to accomplish this, mirroring the approach in Python: object and zip:

• zip takes a number of arrays as input and produces a single array as output containing a tuple of elements from each array. For example zip([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]) returns [[1,4,7],[2,5,8],[3,6,9]].
• object takes takes a zipped array as above with (key, value) pairs and produces an object as output. For example object([["foo":1],["bar":2]]) returns {"foo":1,"bar":2}.

[jszwedko]

I'd suggest a different name for the function that takes an array of "tuples" than object, which already exists. Maybe from_pairs? That's what lodash calls it. Maybe there are other examples from other languages or libraries we could use for inspiration.

[bruceg]

I missed that object was already a function, and I'm on board with something like from_pairs, but isn't that a little ambiguous as to what the output of such a function would be?

[jszwedko]

True, could call it object_from_pairs to be explicit. Granted we have other functions already where the return type isn't clear just from the name itself (e.g. from_unix_timestamp).