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Functional Python Programming

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

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781784396992
Length 360 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Steven F. Lott Steven F. Lott
Author Profile Icon Steven F. Lott
Steven F. Lott
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Table of Contents (18) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introducing Functional Programming 2. Introducing Some Functional Features FREE CHAPTER 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...

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