elegant function-level programming in python

The functool library offers very useful methods to manipulate functions.
The most commonly used is partial:

def plus(a,b):
  return a+b;

plus2 = functools.partial(b=2);

map(plus2,[1,2,3])
#> [3, 4, 5]

Other methods can transform functions to simplify comparison and ordering. For instance, cmp_to_key can turn a comparator into a key function.

from functools import cmp_to_key

def rev_diff(x, y):
  return y - x;

rev = cmp_to_key(rev_diff)

sorted([5,1,3,4], key = rev)
#> [5,4,3,1]