In what situation should the built-in 'operator' module be used in python?

Question

I\'m speaking of this module: http://docs.python.org/library/operator.html

From the article:

The operator module exports a set of functions

Answer 1

for example get column in list whose member is tuple, sort sequence by column:

def item_ope():
    s = ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']
    print operator.getitem(s, 1)
    # e
    print operator.itemgetter(1, 4)(s)
    # ('e', 'o')

    inventory = [('apple', 3), ('banana', 2), ('pear', 5), ('orange', 1)]
    get_count = operator.itemgetter(1)
    print map(get_count, inventory)
    # [3, 2, 5, 1]

    print sorted(inventory, key=get_count)
    # [('orange', 1), ('banana', 2), ('apple', 3), ('pear', 5)]

see a more practical example, we want to sort a dict by key or value:

def dict_sort_by_value():
    dic_num = {'first': 11, 'second': 2, 'third': 33, 'Fourth': 4}

    # print all the keys
    print dic_num.keys()
    # ['second', 'Fourth', 'third', 'first']

    # sorted by value
    sorted_val = sorted(dic_num.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))
    # [('second', 2), ('Fourth', 4), ('first', 11), ('third', 33)]
    print sorted_val

    # sorted by key
    sorted_key = sorted(dic_num.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(0))
    print sorted_key
    # [('Fourth', 4), ('first', 11), ('second', 2), ('third', 33)]

another example when we want get the max value and it's index in list:

def get_max_val_idx():
    lst = [1, 7, 3, 5, 6]
    max_val = max(lst)
    print max_val
    # 7
    max_idx = lst.index(max_val)
    print max_idx
    # 1

    # simplify it by use operator
    index, value = max(enumerate(lst), key=operator.itemgetter(1))
    print index, value
    # 1 7

More demos like below:

import operator

def cmp_fun():
    a, b = 5, 3
    print operator.le(a, b)
    # False
    print operator.gt(a, b)
    # True


def lst_ope():
    lst = [1, 2, 3]
    print operator.indexOf(lst, 2)
    # 1
    lst1 = [1, 2, 3, 2]
    print operator.countOf(lst1, 2)
    # 2


def cal_ope():
    lst1 = [0, 1, 2, 3]
    lst2 = [10, 20, 30, 40]
    print map(operator.mul, lst1, lst2)
    # [0, 20, 60, 120]

    print sum(map(operator.mul, lst1, lst2))
    # 200

    a, b = 1, 3
    print operator.iadd(a, b)
    # 4

see more from python doc