"eval vs operator.methodcaller" - which is better?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:28:37 +0530, Laxmikant Chitare wrote:

> Aha, that was smart Chris. Thank you.
> 
> But this raises another question in my mind. What is the use case for
> operator.methodcaller ?


The use-case is mostly to allow people to write code in a functional 
style, if they so choose.

import operator
func = operator.methodcaller("spam")
items = map(func, [a, b, c, d])

is the functional-style equivalent of:

items = [obj.spam() for obj in [a, b, c, d]]

methodcaller makes a little more sense if you provide arguments:


func = operator.methodcaller("spam", 1, 2, None, "ham")
items = map(func, [a, b, c, d])

compared to:

items = [obj.spam(1, 2, None, "ham") for obj in [a, b, c, d]]


I expect that the methodcaller version will be very slightly faster in 
this case, since it doesn't have to parse the arguments every time the 
method is called.



-- 
Steven