Functional Python Programming

Chapter 10. The Functools Module

Functional programming emphasizes functions as first class objects. We have many high-order functions that accept functions as arguments or return functions as results. In this chapter, we'll look at the functools library with some functions to help us create and modify functions.

We'll look at some higher-order functions in this chapter. Earlier, we looked at higher-order functions in Chapter 5, Higher-order Functions. We'll continue to look at higher-order function techniques in Chapter 11, Decorator Design Techniques, as well.

We'll look at the following functions in this module:

• @lru_cache: This decorator can be a huge performance boost for certain types of applications.
• @total_ordering: This decorator can help ...