Question

I wrote a function like this, the op gives a operation sign which like '+','-','*','/' or more, the code “adds” everything use the given operator,

Here is the code:

def arithmetic(op,*args):
  result = args[0]
    for x in args[1:]:
       if op =='+':
           result += x
       elif op == '-':
           result -= x
       elif op == '*':
           result *= x
       elif op == '/':
           result /= x
  return result

Is there a way i can use the +,-,*,/ directly? So I don’t have to write an If-Else statement?

Answer 1

I think you’re looking for the builtin reduce function combined with operator:

import operator
a = range(10)
reduce(operator.add,a) #45
reduce(operator.sub,a) #-45
reduce(operator.mul,a) #0 -- first element is 0.
reduce(operator.div,a) #0 -- first element is 0.

Of course, if you want to do this using strings, you can map the strings to an operation using a dict:

operations = {'+':operator.add,'-':operator.sub,} # ...

then it becomes:

reduce(operations[your_operator],a)