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Functional Python Programming

Functional programming's efficiency stems, in part, from being able to defer a computation until it's required. The idea of lazy or non-strict evaluation is very helpful. To an extent, Python offers this feature.
In Python, the logical expression operators and
, or
, and if-then-else
are all non-strict. We sometimes call them short-circuit operators because they don't need to evaluate all arguments to determine the resulting value.
The following command snippet shows the and
operator's non-strict feature:
>>> 0 and print("right")
0
>>> True and print("right")
right
When we execute the first of the preceding command snippet, the left-hand side of the and
operator is equivalent to False
; the right-hand side is not evaluated. In the second example, when the left-hand side is equivalent to True
, the right-hand side is evaluated.
Other parts of Python are strict. Outside the logical operators, an expression is evaluated eagerly from left to right. A...
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