Introduction One of the most “obscure” features of Python that almost all Python programmers use, even the beginner ones, but don’t really understand, is context managers. You’ve probably seen them in the form of with statements, usually first encountered when you learn opening files in Python. Although context managers seem a little strange at first, when we really dive into them, understand the motivation and techniques behind it, we get access to a new weapon in our programming arsenal. So […]

What are Iterators? An iterator in Python refers to an object that we can iterate upon. The iterator consists of countable values, and it is possible to traverse through these values, one by one. The iterator simply implements the Python’s iterator protocol. The iterator protocol is a Python class which comes with two special methods, namely __iter__() and __next__(). With these two methods, the iterator is able to compute the next value in the iteration. With iterators, it is easy […]

What are Lambda Functions? In Python, we use the lambda keyword to declare an anonymous function, which is why we refer to them as “lambda functions”. An anonymous function refers to a function declared with no name. Although syntactically they look different, lambda functions behave in the same way as regular functions that are declared using the def keyword. The following are the characteristics of Python lambda functions: A lambda function can take any number of arguments, but they contain […]

Introduction When we think about repeating a task, we usually think about the for and while loops. These constructs allow us to perform iteration over a list, collection, etc. However, there’s another form of repeating a task, in a slightly different manner. By calling a function within itself, to solve a smaller instance of the same problem, we’re performing recursion. These functions call themselves until the problem is solved, practically dividing the initial problem to a lot of smaller instances […]