Functional Programming HOWTO

Release 2.7.10

Guido van Rossum

and the Python development team
November 14, 2015
Python Software Foundation
Email: [email protected]

Contents
1

Introduction
1.1 Formal provability . . . . . .
1.2 Modularity . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Ease of debugging and testing
1.4 Composability . . . . . . . . .

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2
3
3
3
3

Iterators
2.1 Data Types That Support Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4
5

Generator expressions and list comprehensions

Generators
4.1 Passing values into a generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7
8

Built-in functions

10

Small functions and the lambda expression

12

The itertools module

7.1 Creating new iterators . . . . .
7.2 Calling functions on elements
7.3 Selecting elements . . . . . .
7.4 Grouping elements . . . . . .

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13
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The functools module

8.1 The operator module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16
16

Revision History and Acknowledgements

17

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10 References
10.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.2 Python-specific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3 Python documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17
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Index

18

Author A. M. Kuchling
Release 0.31
In this document, well take a tour of Pythons features suitable for implementing programs in a functional style.
After an introduction to the concepts of functional programming, well look at language features such as iterators
and generators and relevant library modules such as itertools and functools.

1 Introduction
This section explains the basic concept of functional programming; if youre just interested in learning about
Python language features, skip to the next section.
Programming languages support decomposing problems in several different ways:
Most programming languages are procedural: programs are lists of instructions that tell the computer what
to do with the programs input. C, Pascal, and even Unix shells are procedural languages.
In declarative languages, you write a specification that describes the problem to be solved, and the language
implementation figures out how to perform the computation efficiently. SQL is the declarative language
youre most likely to be familiar with; a SQL query describes the data set you want to retrieve, and the SQL
engine decides whether to scan tables or use indexes, which subclauses should be performed first, etc.
Object-oriented programs manipulate collections of objects. Objects have internal state and support methods that query or modify this internal state in some way. Smalltalk and Java are object-oriented languages.
C++ and Python are languages that support object-oriented programming, but dont force the use of objectoriented features.
Functional programming decomposes a problem into a set of functions. Ideally, functions only take inputs
and produce outputs, and dont have any internal state that affects the output produced for a given input.
Well-known functional languages include the ML family (Standard ML, OCaml, and other variants) and
Haskell.
The designers of some computer languages choose to emphasize one particular approach to programming. This
often makes it difficult to write programs that use a different approach. Other languages are multi-paradigm
languages that support several different approaches. Lisp, C++, and Python are multi-paradigm; you can write
programs or libraries that are largely procedural, object-oriented, or functional in all of these languages. In a large
program, different sections might be written using different approaches; the GUI might be object-oriented while
the processing logic is procedural or functional, for example.
In a functional program, input flows through a set of functions. Each function operates on its input and produces
some output. Functional style discourages functions with side effects that modify internal state or make other
changes that arent visible in the functions return value. Functions that have no side effects at all are called
purely functional. Avoiding side effects means not using data structures that get updated as a program runs;
every functions output must only depend on its input.
Some languages are very strict about purity and dont even have assignment statements such as a=3 or c = a
+ b, but its difficult to avoid all side effects. Printing to the screen or writing to a disk file are side effects, for
example. For example, in Python a print statement or a time.sleep(1) both return no useful value; theyre
only called for their side effects of sending some text to the screen or pausing execution for a second.
Python programs written in functional style usually wont go to the extreme of avoiding all I/O or all assignments;
instead, theyll provide a functional-appearing interface but will use non-functional features internally. For example, the implementation of a function will still use assignments to local variables, but wont modify global
variables or have other side effects.
Functional programming can be considered the opposite of object-oriented programming. Objects are little capsules containing some internal state along with a collection of method calls that let you modify this state, and
programs consist of making the right set of state changes. Functional programming wants to avoid state changes
as much as possible and works with data flowing between functions. In Python you might combine the two
approaches by writing functions that take and return instances representing objects in your application (e-mail
messages, transactions, etc.).

Functional design may seem like an odd constraint to work under. Why should you avoid objects and side effects?
There are theoretical and practical advantages to the functional style:
Formal provability.
Modularity.
Composability.
Ease of debugging and testing.

1.1 Formal provability

A theoretical benefit is that its easier to construct a mathematical proof that a functional program is correct.
For a long time researchers have been interested in finding ways to mathematically prove programs correct. This is
different from testing a program on numerous inputs and concluding that its output is usually correct, or reading a
programs source code and concluding that the code looks right; the goal is instead a rigorous proof that a program
produces the right result for all possible inputs.
The technique used to prove programs correct is to write down invariants, properties of the input data and of
the programs variables that are always true. For each line of code, you then show that if invariants X and Y are
true before the line is executed, the slightly different invariants X and Y are true after the line is executed. This
continues until you reach the end of the program, at which point the invariants should match the desired conditions
on the programs output.
Functional programmings avoidance of assignments arose because assignments are difficult to handle with this
technique; assignments can break invariants that were true before the assignment without producing any new
invariants that can be propagated onward.
Unfortunately, proving programs correct is largely impractical and not relevant to Python software. Even trivial
programs require proofs that are several pages long; the proof of correctness for a moderately complicated program
would be enormous, and few or none of the programs you use daily (the Python interpreter, your XML parser,
your web browser) could be proven correct. Even if you wrote down or generated a proof, there would then be the
question of verifying the proof; maybe theres an error in it, and you wrongly believe youve proved the program
correct.

1.2 Modularity
A more practical benefit of functional programming is that it forces you to break apart your problem into small
pieces. Programs are more modular as a result. Its easier to specify and write a small function that does one thing
than a large function that performs a complicated transformation. Small functions are also easier to read and to
check for errors.

1.3 Ease of debugging and testing

Testing and debugging a functional-style program is easier.
Debugging is simplified because functions are generally small and clearly specified. When a program doesnt
work, each function is an interface point where you can check that the data are correct. You can look at the
intermediate inputs and outputs to quickly isolate the function thats responsible for a bug.
Testing is easier because each function is a potential subject for a unit test. Functions dont depend on system
state that needs to be replicated before running a test; instead you only have to synthesize the right input and then
check that the output matches expectations.

1.4 Composability
As you work on a functional-style program, youll write a number of functions with varying inputs and outputs.
Some of these functions will be unavoidably specialized to a particular application, but others will be useful in a

wide variety of programs. For example, a function that takes a directory path and returns all the XML files in the
directory, or a function that takes a filename and returns its contents, can be applied to many different situations.
Over time youll form a personal library of utilities. Often youll assemble new programs by arranging existing
functions in a new configuration and writing a few functions specialized for the current task.

2 Iterators
Ill start by looking at a Python language feature thats an important foundation for writing functional-style programs: iterators.
An iterator is an object representing a stream of data; this object returns the data one element at a time. A Python
iterator must support a method called next() that takes no arguments and always returns the next element of
the stream. If there are no more elements in the stream, next() must raise the StopIteration exception.
Iterators dont have to be finite, though; its perfectly reasonable to write an iterator that produces an infinite
stream of data.
The built-in iter() function takes an arbitrary object and tries to return an iterator that will return the objects
contents or elements, raising TypeError if the object doesnt support iteration. Several of Pythons built-in data
types support iteration, the most common being lists and dictionaries. An object is called an iterable object if you
can get an iterator for it.
You can experiment with the iteration interface manually:
>>> L = [1,2,3]
>>> it = iter(L)
>>> print it
<...iterator object at ...>
>>> it.next()
1
>>> it.next()
2
>>> it.next()
3
>>> it.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
StopIteration
>>>
Python expects iterable objects in several different contexts, the most important being the for statement. In the
statement for X in Y, Y must be an iterator or some object for which iter() can create an iterator. These
two statements are equivalent:
for i in iter(obj):
print i
for i in obj:
print i
Iterators can be materialized as lists or tuples by using the list() or tuple() constructor functions:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
(1,

L = [1,2,3]
iterator = iter(L)
t = tuple(iterator)
t
2, 3)

Sequence unpacking also supports iterators: if you know an iterator will return N elements, you can unpack them
into an N-tuple:

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
(1,

L = [1,2,3]
iterator = iter(L)
a,b,c = iterator
a,b,c
2, 3)

Built-in functions such as max() and min() can take a single iterator argument and will return the largest or
smallest element. The "in" and "not in" operators also support iterators: X in iterator is true if X is
found in the stream returned by the iterator. Youll run into obvious problems if the iterator is infinite; max(),
min() will never return, and if the element X never appears in the stream, the "in" and "not in" operators
wont return either.
Note that you can only go forward in an iterator; theres no way to get the previous element, reset the iterator, or
make a copy of it. Iterator objects can optionally provide these additional capabilities, but the iterator protocol
only specifies the next() method. Functions may therefore consume all of the iterators output, and if you need
to do something different with the same stream, youll have to create a new iterator.

2.1 Data Types That Support Iterators

Weve already seen how lists and tuples support iterators. In fact, any Python sequence type, such as strings, will
automatically support creation of an iterator.
Calling iter() on a dictionary returns an iterator that will loop over the dictionarys keys:
>>>
...
>>>
...
Mar
Feb
Aug
Sep
Apr
Jun
Jul
Jan
May
Nov
Dec
Oct

m = {'Jan': 1, 'Feb': 2, 'Mar': 3, 'Apr': 4, 'May': 5, 'Jun': 6,

'Jul': 7, 'Aug': 8, 'Sep': 9, 'Oct': 10, 'Nov': 11, 'Dec': 12}
for key in m:
print key, m[key]
3
2
8
9
4
6
7
1
5
11
12
10

Note that the order is essentially random, because its based on the hash ordering of the objects in the dictionary.
Applying iter() to a dictionary always loops over the keys, but dictionaries have methods that return other
iterators. If you want to iterate over keys, values, or key/value pairs, you can explicitly call the iterkeys(),
itervalues(), or iteritems() methods to get an appropriate iterator.
The dict() constructor can accept an iterator that returns a finite stream of (key, value) tuples:
>>> L = [('Italy', 'Rome'), ('France', 'Paris'), ('US', 'Washington DC')]
>>> dict(iter(L))
{'Italy': 'Rome', 'US': 'Washington DC', 'France': 'Paris'}
Files also support iteration by calling the readline() method until there are no more lines in the file. This
means you can read each line of a file like this:
for line in file:
# do something for each line
...
Sets can take their contents from an iterable and let you iterate over the sets elements:

S = set((2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13))

for i in S:
print i

3 Generator expressions and list comprehensions

Two common operations on an iterators output are 1) performing some operation for every element, 2) selecting
a subset of elements that meet some condition. For example, given a list of strings, you might want to strip off
trailing whitespace from each line or extract all the strings containing a given substring.
List comprehensions and generator expressions (short form: listcomps and genexps) are a concise notation
for such operations, borrowed from the functional programming language Haskell (http://www.haskell.org/). You
can strip all the whitespace from a stream of strings with the following code:
line_list = ['

line 1\n', 'line 2

\n', ...]

# Generator expression -- returns iterator

stripped_iter = (line.strip() for line in line_list)
# List comprehension -- returns list
stripped_list = [line.strip() for line in line_list]
You can select only certain elements by adding an "if" condition:
stripped_list = [line.strip() for line in line_list
if line != ""]
With a list comprehension, you get back a Python list; stripped_list is a list containing the resulting lines,
not an iterator. Generator expressions return an iterator that computes the values as necessary, not needing to
materialize all the values at once. This means that list comprehensions arent useful if youre working with
iterators that return an infinite stream or a very large amount of data. Generator expressions are preferable in these
situations.
Generator expressions are surrounded by parentheses (()) and list comprehensions are surrounded by square
brackets ([]). Generator expressions have the form:
( expression for expr in sequence1
if condition1
for expr2 in sequence2
if condition2
for expr3 in sequence3 ...
if condition3
for exprN in sequenceN
if conditionN )
Again, for a list comprehension only the outside brackets are different (square brackets instead of parentheses).
The elements of the generated output will be the successive values of expression. The if clauses are all
optional; if present, expression is only evaluated and added to the result when condition is true.
Generator expressions always have to be written inside parentheses, but the parentheses signalling a function call
also count. If you want to create an iterator that will be immediately passed to a function you can write:
obj_total = sum(obj.count for obj in list_all_objects())
The for...in clauses contain the sequences to be iterated over. The sequences do not have to be the same
length, because they are iterated over from left to right, not in parallel. For each element in sequence1,
sequence2 is looped over from the beginning. sequence3 is then looped over for each resulting pair of
elements from sequence1 and sequence2.
To put it another way, a list comprehension or generator expression is equivalent to the following Python code:

for expr1 in sequence1:

if not (condition1):
continue
# Skip this element
for expr2 in sequence2:
if not (condition2):
continue
# Skip this element
...
for exprN in sequenceN:
if not (conditionN):
continue
# Skip this element
# Output the value of
# the expression.
This means that when there are multiple for...in clauses but no if clauses, the length of the resulting output
will be equal to the product of the lengths of all the sequences. If you have two lists of length 3, the output list is
9 elements long:
>>> seq1 =
>>> seq2 =
>>> [(x,y)
[('a', 1),
('b', 1),
('c', 1),

'abc'
(1,2,3)
for x in seq1 for y in seq2]
('a', 2), ('a', 3),
('b', 2), ('b', 3),
('c', 2), ('c', 3)]

To avoid introducing an ambiguity into Pythons grammar, if expression is creating a tuple, it must be surrounded with parentheses. The first list comprehension below is a syntax error, while the second one is correct:
#
[
#
[

Syntax error
x,y for x in seq1 for y in seq2]
Correct
(x,y) for x in seq1 for y in seq2]

4 Generators
Generators are a special class of functions that simplify the task of writing iterators. Regular functions compute a
value and return it, but generators return an iterator that returns a stream of values.
Youre doubtless familiar with how regular function calls work in Python or C. When you call a function, it gets
a private namespace where its local variables are created. When the function reaches a return statement, the
local variables are destroyed and the value is returned to the caller. A later call to the same function creates a
new private namespace and a fresh set of local variables. But, what if the local variables werent thrown away on
exiting a function? What if you could later resume the function where it left off? This is what generators provide;
they can be thought of as resumable functions.
Heres the simplest example of a generator function:
def generate_ints(N):
for i in range(N):
yield i
Any function containing a yield keyword is a generator function; this is detected by Pythons bytecode compiler
which compiles the function specially as a result.
When you call a generator function, it doesnt return a single value; instead it returns a generator object that
supports the iterator protocol. On executing the yield expression, the generator outputs the value of i, similar to
a return statement. The big difference between yield and a return statement is that on reaching a yield
the generators state of execution is suspended and local variables are preserved. On the next call to the generators
.next() method, the function will resume executing.
Heres a sample usage of the generate_ints() generator:

>>> gen = generate_ints(3)

>>> gen
<generator object generate_ints at ...>
>>> gen.next()
0
>>> gen.next()
1
>>> gen.next()
2
>>> gen.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "stdin", line 1, in ?
File "stdin", line 2, in generate_ints
StopIteration
You could equally write for i in generate_ints(5), or a,b,c = generate_ints(3).
Inside a generator function, the return statement can only be used without a value, and signals the end of the
procession of values; after executing a return the generator cannot return any further values. return with a
value, such as return 5, is a syntax error inside a generator function. The end of the generators results can also
be indicated by raising StopIteration manually, or by just letting the flow of execution fall off the bottom of
the function.
You could achieve the effect of generators manually by writing your own class and storing all the local variables of the generator as instance variables. For example, returning a list of integers could be done by setting
self.count to 0, and having the next() method increment self.count and return it. However, for a
moderately complicated generator, writing a corresponding class can be much messier.
The test suite included with Pythons library, test_generators.py, contains a number of more interesting
examples. Heres one generator that implements an in-order traversal of a tree using generators recursively.
# A recursive generator that generates Tree leaves in in-order.
def inorder(t):
if t:
for x in inorder(t.left):
yield x
yield t.label
for x in inorder(t.right):
yield x
Two other examples in test_generators.py produce solutions for the N-Queens problem (placing N queens
on an NxN chess board so that no queen threatens another) and the Knights Tour (finding a route that takes a knight
to every square of an NxN chessboard without visiting any square twice).

4.1 Passing values into a generator

In Python 2.4 and earlier, generators only produced output. Once a generators code was invoked to create an
iterator, there was no way to pass any new information into the function when its execution is resumed. You could
hack together this ability by making the generator look at a global variable or by passing in some mutable object
that callers then modify, but these approaches are messy.
In Python 2.5 theres a simple way to pass values into a generator. yield became an expression, returning a value
that can be assigned to a variable or otherwise operated on:
val = (yield i)
I recommend that you always put parentheses around a yield expression when youre doing something with the
returned value, as in the above example. The parentheses arent always necessary, but its easier to always add
them instead of having to remember when theyre needed.

(PEP 342 explains the exact rules, which are that a yield-expression must always be parenthesized except when
it occurs at the top-level expression on the right-hand side of an assignment. This means you can write val =
yield i but have to use parentheses when theres an operation, as in val = (yield i) + 12.)
Values are sent into a generator by calling its send(value) method. This method resumes the generators code
and the yield expression returns the specified value. If the regular next() method is called, the yield returns
None.
Heres a simple counter that increments by 1 and allows changing the value of the internal counter.
def counter (maximum):
i = 0
while i < maximum:
val = (yield i)
# If value provided, change counter
if val is not None:
i = val
else:
i += 1
And heres an example of changing the counter:
>>> it = counter(10)
>>> print it.next()
0
>>> print it.next()
1
>>> print it.send(8)
8
>>> print it.next()
9
>>> print it.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "t.py", line 15, in ?
print it.next()
StopIteration
Because yield will often be returning None, you should always check for this case. Dont just use its value in
expressions unless youre sure that the send() method will be the only method used to resume your generator
function.
In addition to send(), there are two other new methods on generators:
throw(type, value=None, traceback=None) is used to raise an exception inside the generator;
the exception is raised by the yield expression where the generators execution is paused.
close() raises a GeneratorExit exception inside the generator to terminate the iteration. On receiving this exception, the generators code must either raise GeneratorExit or StopIteration;
catching the exception and doing anything else is illegal and will trigger a RuntimeError. close()
will also be called by Pythons garbage collector when the generator is garbage-collected.
If you need to run cleanup code when a GeneratorExit occurs, I suggest using a try:
finally: suite instead of catching GeneratorExit.

...

The cumulative effect of these changes is to turn generators from one-way producers of information into both
producers and consumers.
Generators also become coroutines, a more generalized form of subroutines. Subroutines are entered at one point
and exited at another point (the top of the function, and a return statement), but coroutines can be entered,
exited, and resumed at many different points (the yield statements).

5 Built-in functions
Lets look in more detail at built-in functions often used with iterators.
Two of Pythons built-in functions, map() and filter(), are somewhat obsolete; they duplicate the features
of list comprehensions but return actual lists instead of iterators.
map(f, iterA, iterB, ...) returns a list containing f(iterA[0], iterB[0]), f(iterA[1],
iterB[1]), f(iterA[2], iterB[2]), ....
>>> def upper(s):
...
return s.upper()
>>> map(upper, ['sentence', 'fragment'])
['SENTENCE', 'FRAGMENT']
>>> [upper(s) for s in ['sentence', 'fragment']]
['SENTENCE', 'FRAGMENT']
As shown above, you can achieve the same effect with a list comprehension. The itertools.imap() function
does the same thing but can handle infinite iterators; itll be discussed later, in the section on the itertools
module.
filter(predicate, iter) returns a list that contains all the sequence elements that meet a certain condition, and is similarly duplicated by list comprehensions. A predicate is a function that returns the truth value of
some condition; for use with filter(), the predicate must take a single value.
>>> def is_even(x):
...
return (x % 2) == 0
>>> filter(is_even, range(10))
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
This can also be written as a list comprehension:
>>> [x for x in range(10) if is_even(x)]
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
filter() also has a counterpart in the itertools module, itertools.ifilter(), that returns an iterator and can therefore handle infinite sequences just as itertools.imap() can.
reduce(func, iter, [initial_value]) doesnt have a counterpart in the itertools module because it cumulatively performs an operation on all the iterables elements and therefore cant be applied to infinite
iterables. func must be a function that takes two elements and returns a single value. reduce() takes the first
two elements A and B returned by the iterator and calculates func(A, B). It then requests the third element, C,
calculates func(func(A, B), C), combines this result with the fourth element returned, and continues until
the iterable is exhausted. If the iterable returns no values at all, a TypeError exception is raised. If the initial
value is supplied, its used as a starting point and func(initial_value, A) is the first calculation.
>>> import operator
>>> reduce(operator.concat, ['A', 'BB', 'C'])
'ABBC'
>>> reduce(operator.concat, [])
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: reduce() of empty sequence with no initial value
>>> reduce(operator.mul, [1,2,3], 1)
6
>>> reduce(operator.mul, [], 1)
1
If you use operator.add() with reduce(), youll add up all the elements of the iterable. This case is so
common that theres a special built-in called sum() to compute it:

>>> reduce(operator.add, [1,2,3,4], 0)

10
>>> sum([1,2,3,4])
10
>>> sum([])
0
For many uses of reduce(), though, it can be clearer to just write the obvious for loop:
# Instead of:
product = reduce(operator.mul, [1,2,3], 1)
# You can write:
product = 1
for i in [1,2,3]:
product *= i
enumerate(iter) counts off the elements in the iterable, returning 2-tuples containing the count and each
element.
>>>
...
(0,
(1,
(2,

for item in enumerate(['subject', 'verb', 'object']):

print item
'subject')
'verb')
'object')

enumerate() is often used when looping through a list and recording the indexes at which certain conditions
are met:
f = open('data.txt', 'r')
for i, line in enumerate(f):
if line.strip() == '':
print 'Blank line at line #%i' % i
sorted(iterable, [cmp=None], [key=None], [reverse=False]) collects all the elements of
the iterable into a list, sorts the list, and returns the sorted result. The cmp, key, and reverse arguments are
passed through to the constructed lists .sort() method.
>>> import random
>>> # Generate 8 random numbers between [0, 10000)
>>> rand_list = random.sample(range(10000), 8)
>>> rand_list
[769, 7953, 9828, 6431, 8442, 9878, 6213, 2207]
>>> sorted(rand_list)
[769, 2207, 6213, 6431, 7953, 8442, 9828, 9878]
>>> sorted(rand_list, reverse=True)
[9878, 9828, 8442, 7953, 6431, 6213, 2207, 769]
(For a more detailed discussion of sorting, see the Sorting mini-HOWTO in the Python wiki at
https://wiki.python.org/moin/HowTo/Sorting.)
The any(iter) and all(iter) built-ins look at the truth values of an iterables contents. any() returns
True if any element in the iterable is a true value, and all() returns True if all of the elements are true values:
>>> any([0,1,0])
True
>>> any([0,0,0])
False
>>> any([1,1,1])
True
>>> all([0,1,0])
False
>>> all([0,0,0])
False

>>> all([1,1,1])
True

6 Small functions and the lambda expression

When writing functional-style programs, youll often need little functions that act as predicates or that combine
elements in some way.
If theres a Python built-in or a module function thats suitable, you dont need to define a new function at all:
stripped_lines = [line.strip() for line in lines]
existing_files = filter(os.path.exists, file_list)
If the function you need doesnt exist, you need to write it. One way to write small functions is to use the lambda
statement. lambda takes a number of parameters and an expression combining these parameters, and creates a
small function that returns the value of the expression:
lowercase = lambda x: x.lower()
print_assign = lambda name, value: name + '=' + str(value)
adder = lambda x, y: x+y
An alternative is to just use the def statement and define a function in the usual way:
def lowercase(x):
return x.lower()
def print_assign(name, value):
return name + '=' + str(value)
def adder(x,y):
return x + y
Which alternative is preferable? Thats a style question; my usual course is to avoid using lambda.
One reason for my preference is that lambda is quite limited in the functions it can define. The result has
to be computable as a single expression, which means you cant have multiway if... elif... else
comparisons or try... except statements. If you try to do too much in a lambda statement, youll end up
with an overly complicated expression thats hard to read. Quick, whats the following code doing?
total = reduce(lambda a, b: (0, a[1] + b[1]), items)[1]
You can figure it out, but it takes time to disentangle the expression to figure out whats going on. Using a short
nested def statements makes things a little bit better:
def combine (a, b):
return 0, a[1] + b[1]
total = reduce(combine, items)[1]
But it would be best of all if I had simply used a for loop:
total = 0
for a, b in items:
total += b
Or the sum() built-in and a generator expression:
total = sum(b for a,b in items)
Many uses of reduce() are clearer when written as for loops.
Fredrik Lundh once suggested the following set of rules for refactoring uses of lambda:

1. Write a lambda function.

2. Write a comment explaining what the heck that lambda does.
3. Study the comment for a while, and think of a name that captures the essence of the comment.
4. Convert the lambda to a def statement, using that name.
5. Remove the comment.
I really like these rules, but youre free to disagree about whether this lambda-free style is better.

7 The itertools module

The itertools module contains a number of commonly-used iterators as well as functions for combining
several iterators. This section will introduce the modules contents by showing small examples.
The modules functions fall into a few broad classes:
Functions that create a new iterator based on an existing iterator.
Functions for treating an iterators elements as function arguments.
Functions for selecting portions of an iterators output.
A function for grouping an iterators output.

7.1 Creating new iterators

itertools.count(n) returns an infinite stream of integers, increasing by 1 each time. You can optionally
supply the starting number, which defaults to 0:
itertools.count() =>
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ...
itertools.count(10) =>
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, ...
itertools.cycle(iter) saves a copy of the contents of a provided iterable and returns a new iterator that
returns its elements from first to last. The new iterator will repeat these elements infinitely.
itertools.cycle([1,2,3,4,5]) =>
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...
itertools.repeat(elem, [n]) returns the provided element n times, or returns the element endlessly if
n is not provided.
itertools.repeat('abc') =>
abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, abc, ...
itertools.repeat('abc', 5) =>
abc, abc, abc, abc, abc
itertools.chain(iterA, iterB, ...) takes an arbitrary number of iterables as input, and returns all
the elements of the first iterator, then all the elements of the second, and so on, until all of the iterables have been
exhausted.
itertools.chain(['a', 'b', 'c'], (1, 2, 3)) =>
a, b, c, 1, 2, 3
itertools.izip(iterA, iterB, ...) takes one element from each iterable and returns them in a
tuple:
itertools.izip(['a', 'b', 'c'], (1, 2, 3)) =>
('a', 1), ('b', 2), ('c', 3)

Its similar to the built-in zip() function, but doesnt construct an in-memory list and exhaust all the input
iterators before returning; instead tuples are constructed and returned only if theyre requested. (The technical
term for this behaviour is lazy evaluation.)
This iterator is intended to be used with iterables that are all of the same length. If the iterables are of different
lengths, the resulting stream will be the same length as the shortest iterable.
itertools.izip(['a', 'b'], (1, 2, 3)) =>
('a', 1), ('b', 2)
You should avoid doing this, though, because an element may be taken from the longer iterators and discarded.
This means you cant go on to use the iterators further because you risk skipping a discarded element.
itertools.islice(iter, [start], stop, [step]) returns a stream thats a slice of the iterator.
With a single stop argument, it will return the first stop elements. If you supply a starting index, youll get
stop-start elements, and if you supply a value for step, elements will be skipped accordingly. Unlike
Pythons string and list slicing, you cant use negative values for start, stop, or step.
itertools.islice(range(10), 8) =>
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
itertools.islice(range(10), 2, 8) =>
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
itertools.islice(range(10), 2, 8, 2) =>
2, 4, 6
itertools.tee(iter, [n]) replicates an iterator; it returns n independent iterators that will all return the
contents of the source iterator. If you dont supply a value for n, the default is 2. Replicating iterators requires
saving some of the contents of the source iterator, so this can consume significant memory if the iterator is large
and one of the new iterators is consumed more than the others.
itertools.tee( itertools.count() ) =>
iterA, iterB
where iterA ->
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ...
and

iterB ->
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ...

7.2 Calling functions on elements

Two functions are used for calling other functions on the contents of an iterable.
itertools.imap(f, iterA, iterB, ...)
returns a stream containing
iterB[0]), f(iterA[1], iterB[1]), f(iterA[2], iterB[2]), ...:

f(iterA[0],

itertools.imap(operator.add, [5, 6, 5], [1, 2, 3]) =>

6, 8, 8
The operator module contains a set of functions corresponding to Pythons operators. Some examples are operator.add(a, b) (adds two values), operator.ne(a, b) (same as a!=b), and
operator.attrgetter(id) (returns a callable that fetches the "id" attribute).
itertools.starmap(func, iter) assumes that the iterable will return a stream of tuples, and calls f()
using these tuples as the arguments:
itertools.starmap(os.path.join,
[('/usr', 'bin', 'java'), ('/bin', 'python'),
('/usr', 'bin', 'perl'),('/usr', 'bin', 'ruby')])
=>
/usr/bin/java, /bin/python, /usr/bin/perl, /usr/bin/ruby

7.3 Selecting elements

Another group of functions chooses a subset of an iterators elements based on a predicate.
itertools.ifilter(predicate, iter) returns all the elements for which the predicate returns true:
def is_even(x):
return (x % 2) == 0
itertools.ifilter(is_even, itertools.count()) =>
0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, ...
itertools.ifilterfalse(predicate, iter) is the opposite, returning all elements for which the
predicate returns false:
itertools.ifilterfalse(is_even, itertools.count()) =>
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, ...
itertools.takewhile(predicate, iter) returns elements for as long as the predicate returns true.
Once the predicate returns false, the iterator will signal the end of its results.
def less_than_10(x):
return (x < 10)
itertools.takewhile(less_than_10, itertools.count()) =>
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
itertools.takewhile(is_even, itertools.count()) =>
0
itertools.dropwhile(predicate, iter) discards elements while the predicate returns true, and then
returns the rest of the iterables results.
itertools.dropwhile(less_than_10, itertools.count()) =>
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, ...
itertools.dropwhile(is_even, itertools.count()) =>
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ...

7.4 Grouping elements

The last function Ill discuss, itertools.groupby(iter, key_func=None), is the most complicated.
key_func(elem) is a function that can compute a key value for each element returned by the iterable. If you
dont supply a key function, the key is simply each element itself.
groupby() collects all the consecutive elements from the underlying iterable that have the same key value, and
returns a stream of 2-tuples containing a key value and an iterator for the elements with that key.
city_list = [('Decatur', 'AL'), ('Huntsville', 'AL'), ('Selma', 'AL'),
('Anchorage', 'AK'), ('Nome', 'AK'),
('Flagstaff', 'AZ'), ('Phoenix', 'AZ'), ('Tucson', 'AZ'),
...
]
def get_state ((city, state)):
return state
itertools.groupby(city_list, get_state) =>
('AL', iterator-1),
('AK', iterator-2),
('AZ', iterator-3), ...

where
iterator-1 =>
('Decatur', 'AL'), ('Huntsville', 'AL'), ('Selma', 'AL')
iterator-2 =>
('Anchorage', 'AK'), ('Nome', 'AK')
iterator-3 =>
('Flagstaff', 'AZ'), ('Phoenix', 'AZ'), ('Tucson', 'AZ')
groupby() assumes that the underlying iterables contents will already be sorted based on the key. Note that
the returned iterators also use the underlying iterable, so you have to consume the results of iterator-1 before
requesting iterator-2 and its corresponding key.

8 The functools module

The functools module in Python 2.5 contains some higher-order functions. A higher-order function
takes one or more functions as input and returns a new function. The most useful tool in this module is the
functools.partial() function.
For programs written in a functional style, youll sometimes want to construct variants of existing functions that
have some of the parameters filled in. Consider a Python function f(a, b, c); you may wish to create a new
function g(b, c) thats equivalent to f(1, b, c); youre filling in a value for one of f()s parameters. This
is called partial function application.
The
constructor
for
partial
takes
the
arguments
(function, arg1, arg2, ...
kwarg1=value1, kwarg2=value2). The resulting object is callable, so you can just call it to invoke function with the filled-in arguments.
Heres a small but realistic example:
import functools
def log (message, subsystem):
"Write the contents of 'message' to the specified subsystem."
print '%s: %s' % (subsystem, message)
...
server_log = functools.partial(log, subsystem='server')
server_log('Unable to open socket')

8.1 The operator module

The operator module was mentioned earlier. It contains a set of functions corresponding to Pythons operators.
These functions are often useful in functional-style code because they save you from writing trivial functions that
perform a single operation.
Some of the functions in this module are:
Math operations: add(), sub(), mul(), div(), floordiv(), abs(), ...
Logical operations: not_(), truth().
Bitwise operations: and_(), or_(), invert().
Comparisons: eq(), ne(), lt(), le(), gt(), and ge().
Object identity: is_(), is_not().
Consult the operator modules documentation for a complete list.

9 Revision History and Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following people for offering suggestions, corrections and assistance with
various drafts of this article: Ian Bicking, Nick Coghlan, Nick Efford, Raymond Hettinger, Jim Jewett, Mike
Krell, Leandro Lameiro, Jussi Salmela, Collin Winter, Blake Winton.
Version 0.1: posted June 30 2006.
Version 0.11: posted July 1 2006. Typo fixes.
Version 0.2: posted July 10 2006. Merged genexp and listcomp sections into one. Typo fixes.
Version 0.21: Added more references suggested on the tutor mailing list.
Version 0.30: Adds a section on the functional module written by Collin Winter; adds short section on the
operator module; a few other edits.

10 References
10.1 General
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie
Sussman. Full text at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/. In this classic textbook of computer science, chapters 2 and 3
discuss the use of sequences and streams to organize the data flow inside a program. The book uses Scheme for its
examples, but many of the design approaches described in these chapters are applicable to functional-style Python
code.
http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html: A general introduction to functional programming that uses Java
examples and has a lengthy historical introduction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming: General Wikipedia entry describing functional programming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroutine: Entry for coroutines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying: Entry for the concept of currying.

10.2 Python-specific
http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/: The first chapter of David Mertzs book Text Processing in Python discusses functional
programming for text processing, in the section titled Utilizing Higher-Order Functions in Text Processing.
Mertz also wrote a 3-part series of articles on functional programming for IBMs DeveloperWorks site; see
part 1, part 2, and part 3,

10.3 Python documentation

Documentation for the itertools module.
Documentation for the operator module.
PEP 289: Generator Expressions
PEP 342: Coroutines via Enhanced Generators describes the new generator features in Python 2.5.

Index
P
Python Enhancement Proposals
PEP 289, 17
PEP 342, 17

18