Book Image

Functional Python Programming - Second Edition

By : Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Functional Python Programming - Second Edition

By: Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

If you’re a Python developer who wants to discover how to take the power of functional programming (FP) and bring it into your own programs, then this book is essential for you, even if you know next to nothing about the paradigm. Starting with a general overview of functional concepts, you’ll explore common functional features such as first-class and higher-order functions, pure functions, and more. You’ll see how these are accomplished in Python 3.6 to give you the core foundations you’ll build upon. After that, you’ll discover common functional optimizations for Python to help your apps reach even higher speeds. You’ll learn FP concepts such as lazy evaluation using Python’s generator functions and expressions. Moving forward, you’ll learn to design and implement decorators to create composite functions. You'll also explore data preparation techniques and data exploration in depth, and see how the Python standard library fits the functional programming model. Finally, to top off your journey into the world of functional Python, you’ll at look at the PyMonad project and some larger examples to put everything into perspective.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Function tools


We looked at a number of higher-order functions in Chapter 5, Higher-Order Functions. Those functions either accepted a function as an argument or returned a function (or generator expression) as a result. All those higher-order functions had an essential algorithm that was customized by injecting another function. Functions such as max(), min(), and sorted() accepted a key= function that customized their behavior. Functions such as map() and filter() accept a function and an iterable and apply this function to the arguments. In the case of the map() function, the results of the function are simply yielded. In the case of the filter() function, the Boolean result of the function is used to pass or reject values from an iterable source.

All the functions in Chapter 5, Higher-Order Functions, are part of the Python __builtins__ package, they're available without the need to do an import. They are ubiquitous because they are so universally useful. The functions in this chapter...