Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Functional Python Programming

You're reading from   Functional Python Programming Create succinct and expressive implementations with functional programming in Python

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781784396992
Length 360 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Steven F. Lott Steven F. Lott
Author Profile Icon Steven F. Lott
Steven F. Lott
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (18) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introducing Functional Programming FREE CHAPTER 2. Introducing Some Functional Features 3. Functions, Iterators, and Generators 4. Working with Collections 5. Higher-order Functions 6. Recursions and Reductions 7. Additional Tuple Techniques 8. The Itertools Module 9. More Itertools Techniques 10. The Functools Module 11. Decorator Design Techniques 12. The Multiprocessing and Threading Modules 13. Conditional Expressions and the Operator Module 14. The PyMonad Library 15. A Functional Approach to Web Services 16. Optimizations and Improvements Index

Functions as first-class objects


It shouldn't come as a surprise that Python functions are first-class objects. In Python, functions are objects with a number of attributes. The reference manual lists a number of special member names that apply to functions. Since functions are objects with attributes, we can extract the docstring function or the name of a function, using special attributes such as __doc__ or __name__. We can also extract the body of the function via the __code__ attribute. In compiled languages, this introspection is relatively complex because of the source information that needs to be retained. In Python, it's quite simple.

We can assign functions to variables, pass functions as arguments, and return functions as values. We can easily use these techniques to write higher-order functions.

Since functions are objects, Python already has many features required to be a functional programming language.

Additionally, a callable object also helps us to create functions, which are...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at ₹800/month. Cancel anytime