Book Image

Functional Python Programming, 3rd edition - Third Edition

By : Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Functional Python Programming, 3rd edition - Third Edition

By: Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

Not enough developers understand the benefits of functional programming, or even what it is. Author Steven Lott demystifies the approach, teaching you how to improve the way you code in Python and make gains in memory use and performance. If you’re a leetcoder preparing for coding interviews, this book is for you. Starting from the fundamentals, this book shows you how to apply functional thinking and techniques in a range of scenarios, with Python 3.10+ examples focused on mathematical and statistical algorithms, data cleaning, and exploratory data analysis. You'll learn how to use generator expressions, list comprehensions, and decorators to your advantage. You don't have to abandon object-oriented design completely, though – you'll also see how Python's native object orientation is used in conjunction with functional programming techniques. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed in the essential functional programming features of Python and understand why and when functional thinking helps. You'll also have all the tools you need to pursue any additional functional topics that are not part of the Python language.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Preface
16
Other Books You Might Enjoy
17
Index

8.2 Using the finite iterators

The itertools module provides a number of functions that we can use to produce finite sequences of values. We’ll look at 10 functions in this module, plus some related built-in functions:

  • enumerate(): This function is actually part of the __builtins__ package, but it works with an iterator and is very similar to functions in the itertools module.

  • accumulate(): This function returns a sequence of reductions of the input iterable. It’s a higher-order function and can do a variety of clever calculations.

  • chain(): This function combines multiple iterables serially.

  • groupby(): This function uses a function to decompose a single iterable into a sequence of iterables over subsets of the input data.

  • zip_longest(): This function combines elements from multiple iterables. The built-in zip() function truncates the sequence at the length of the shortest iterable. The zip_longest() function pads the shorter iterables with the given fill value.

  • compress...