Access operator functions by symbol

Question

I need a function which takes one of python\'s operator symbols or keywords as a string, along with its operands, evaluates it, and returns the result. Like

Answer 1

You could use eval to generate lambda functions for the operators instead of using the operator module. Eval is generally bad practice, but I think for this purpose it's fine because it's nothing really crazy.

def make_binary_op(symbol):
    return eval('lambda x, y: x {0} y'.format(symbol))

operators = {}
for operator in '+ - * / ^ % (etc...)'.split(' '):
    operators[operator] = make_binary_op(operator)

operators['*'](3, 5) # == 15