Mastering List Comprehension: Filtering and Transforming Data

List comprehension is a powerful and concise way to create new lists in Python based on existing iterables. This challenge will test your ability to use list comprehension to filter and transform data, demonstrating your understanding of this fundamental Python feature. It's a crucial skill for writing efficient and readable code.

Problem Description

You are tasked with writing a Python function that takes a list of numbers and returns a new list containing only the even numbers, squared. The function should achieve this using list comprehension. The input list may contain positive, negative, and zero values. Your solution must efficiently filter the even numbers and then apply the squaring operation within the list comprehension itself.

What needs to be achieved:

Filter a list of numbers to include only even numbers.
Square each of the even numbers.
Return a new list containing the squared even numbers.

Key Requirements:

The solution must use list comprehension. Using a traditional for loop is not acceptable.
The function should handle both positive and negative numbers correctly.
The function should handle an empty input list gracefully.

Expected Behavior:

The function should return a new list. The original input list should remain unchanged.

Edge Cases to Consider:

Empty input list: Should return an empty list.
List containing only odd numbers: Should return an empty list.
List containing zero: Zero is an even number and should be included (squared, it remains zero).
List containing a mix of positive, negative, and zero values.

Examples

Example 1:

Input: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Output: [4, 16, 36]
Explanation: The even numbers (2, 4, 6) are filtered, then squared to produce [4, 16, 36].

Example 2:

Input: [-2, 0, 2, -4, 1, 3]
Output: [4, 0, 4, 16]
Explanation: The even numbers (-2, 0, 2, -4) are filtered, then squared to produce [4, 0, 4, 16].

Example 3:

Input: [1, 3, 5, 7]
Output: []
Explanation: There are no even numbers in the input list, so an empty list is returned.

Example 4:

Input: []
Output: []
Explanation: The input list is empty, so an empty list is returned.

Constraints

The input list will contain only integers.
The length of the input list can be up to 1000.
The integers in the input list can range from -1000 to 1000.
The solution should be efficient and avoid unnecessary iterations.

Notes

Think about how you can combine the filtering and transformation steps into a single, concise list comprehension expression. Consider the modulo operator (%) to determine if a number is even. Remember that x % 2 == 0 is true if x is even.