Combine many results/files into one. (Map-Reduce)

A beginner-friendly map-reduce pattern for combining many outputs into one file.

Map-reduce means:

• map: run many function calls in parallel

• reduce: combine their outputs into one result

Why you might need this

Use this when you want to do lots of work in parallel, but end with one final output.

• Many files → one report

• Many small results → one total (this example)

Map writes outputs to /workspace/shared. Reduce reads them back and combines them.

Before you start

Make sure you have already:

1. installed Burla: pip install burla

2. connected your machine: burla login

3. started your cluster in the Burla dashboard

If you’re new to /workspace/shared, start with Read and Write GCS Files. If you’re new to func_cpu and func_ram, start with Run code on one big cloud machine.

Step 1 (Map): Write one file per input

from pathlib import Path
from burla import remote_parallel_map


def write_part_file(number):
    part_file_path = f"/workspace/shared/map-reduce-demo/parts/number-{number}.txt"
    Path(part_file_path).parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
    Path(part_file_path).write_text(f"{number}\n")
    return part_file_path


inputs = list(range(5))
part_file_paths = remote_parallel_map(write_part_file, inputs)
print(part_file_paths)

This creates 5 files in /workspace/shared/map-reduce-demo/parts/.

Step 2 (Reduce): Combine all files into one file

The reduce step runs once, so it is a common place to use a bigger machine (more CPU / RAM).

from pathlib import Path
from burla import remote_parallel_map


def combine_part_files(part_paths):
    total = 0
    for path in part_paths:
        total += int(Path(path).read_text().strip())

    output_file_path = "/workspace/shared/map-reduce-demo/final/total.txt"
    Path(output_file_path).parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
    Path(output_file_path).write_text(f"{total}\n")
    return output_file_path


output_file_paths = remote_parallel_map(
    combine_part_files,
    [part_file_paths],
    func_cpu=8,
    func_ram=32,
)
print(output_file_paths[0])

The final combined file path is:

• /workspace/shared/map-reduce-demo/final/total.txt