Operator module In Python comes handy in many cases and it comprises upon specific code lines. Learn more about this module here.
Operator module: Itemgetter
Grouping the key-value pairs of a dictionary by the value with itemgetter:
from itertools import groupby
from operator import itemgetter
adict = {'a': 1, 'b': 5, 'c': 1}
dict((i, dict(v)) for i, v in groupby(adict.items(), itemgetter(1)))
Output: {1: {‘a’: 1, ‘c’: 1}, 5: {‘b’: 5}}
which is equivalent (but faster) to a lambda function like this:
dict((i, dict(v)) for i, v in groupby(adict.items(), lambda x: x[1]))
Or sorting a list of tuples by the second element first the first element as secondary:
alist_of_tuples = [(5,2), (1,3), (2,2)]
sorted(alist_of_tuples, key=itemgetter(1,0))
Output: [(2, 2), (5, 2), (1, 3)]
Operator module: Operators as alternative to an infix operator
For every infix operator, e.g. + there is an operator-function (operator.add for +):
1 + 1
Output: 2
from operator import add
add(1, 1)
Output: 2
even though the main documentation states that for the arithmetic operators only numerical input is allowed it is possible:
from operator import mul
mul('a', 10)
Output: 'aaaaaaaaaa' mul([3], 3)
Output: [3, 3, 3]
See also: mapping from operation to operator function in the official Python documentation.
Methodcaller
Instead of this lambda-function that calls the method explicitly:
alist = ['wolf', 'sheep', 'duck']
list(filter(lambda x: x.startswith('d'), alist)) # Keep only elements that start with 'd'
Output: [‘duck’]
one could use a operator-function that does the same:
from operator import methodcaller
list(filter(methodcaller('startswith', 'd'), alist)) # Does the same but is faster.
Output: [‘duck’]
Must Read Python Interview Questions
200+ Python Tutorials With Coding Examples
Other Python Tutorials
- What is Python?
- Python Advantages
- Python For Beginners
- Python For Machine Learning
- Machine Learning For Beginners
- 130+ Python Projects With Source Code On GitHub