Functional Python Programming

Functions as first-class objects

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Python functions are first-class objects. In Python, functions are objects with a number of attributes. The reference manual lists a number of special member names that apply to functions. Since functions are objects with attributes, we can extract the docstring function or the name of a function, using special attributes such as __doc__ or __name__. We can also extract the body of the function via the __code__ attribute. In compiled languages, this introspection is relatively complex because of the source information that needs to be retained. In Python, it's quite simple.

We can assign functions to variables, pass functions as arguments, and return functions as values. We can ...