Python if-statement with variable mathematical operator

Question

I\'m trying to insert a variable mathematical operator into a if statement, an example of what I\'m trying to achieve in parsing user-supplied mathematical expressions:

Answer 1

Use the operator package together with a dictionary to look up the operators according to their text equivalents. All of these must be either unary or binary operators to work consistently.

import operator
ops = {'==' : operator.eq,
       '!=' : operator.ne,
       '<=' : operator.le,
       '>=' : operator.ge,
       '>'  : operator.gt,
       '<'  : operator.lt}

maths_operator = "=="

if ops[maths_operator]("test", "test"):
    print "match found"

maths_operator = "!="

if ops[maths_operator]("test", "test"):
    print "match found"
else:
    print "match not found"