First Class Citizens in Python 3.x or earlier
By Pavitra WaliaAccording to Wikipedia, A first-class citizen in a given programming language is an entity which enables support for all the operations generally feasible to other entities.
These operations typically include being
1. Passing an argument,
2. Returning from a function,
3. Modification,
4. Assignment to a variable.
In this tutorial, we will learn about these first-class citizens present in Python 3.x or earlier. Also, we will be learning what all entities come under the tag of being First Class citizens.
First Class Citizens in Python
Integers Floating Point Number Complex Numbers Strings
Now as we are familiar with the First-Class Datatypes, let us look at first-class functions in Python 3.x or earlier.
First Class Functions in Python
First class objects are uniformly handled in Python language. Being object-oriented every entity refers to a default object which can be referenced and de-referenced at any point of time. Storage may be done using data structures or control structures.
Now we will look whether python supports first-class functions or not. So any language is said to support first-class functions when it treats functions as first-class objects.
Illustration 1 : First class function
# Python program
# functions being be treated as objects
def display(text):
return text.islower()
print display('CodeSpeedy')
show = display //referencing a function with the object
print show ('codespeedy')Output: False True
Illustration 2: First class function
# Python program
# functions being passed as arguments to other functions
def show(text):
return text.upper()
def display(text):
return text.lower()
def comb(func):
# storing the function in a variable
greeting = func("Hi, I am working on CodeSpeedy")
print greeting
comb(display) //directly referenced by passing functions as arguments.
comb(show) //directly referenced by passing functions as arguments.Output: hi, i am working on codespeedy HI, I AM WORKING ON CODESPEEDY
Here it is clearly seen that Python functions can be referenced using an object and can also be passed as an argument to another function which clearly shows that in Python functions are First Class Citizens and can be referenced and dereferenced using an object entity.
Also, read,
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