This is a subtle question about notation. I want to call a function with specific arguments, but without having to redefine it.
For example, min() with a key function on the second argument key = itemgetter(1) would look like:
min_arg2 = lambda p,q = min(p,q, key = itemgetter(1)) I'm hoping to just call it as something like min( *itemgetter(1) )...
Does anyone know how to do this? Thank you.
You want to use functools.partial():
min_arg2 = functools.partial(min, key=itemgetter(1)) See http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html for the docs.
Example:
>>> import functools >>> from operator import itemgetter >>> min_arg2 = functools.partial(min, key=itemgetter(1)) >>> min_arg2(vals) ('b', 0) 
Using functools (as in Duncan's answer) is a better approach, however you can use a lambda expression, you just didn't get the syntax correct:
min_arg2 = lambda p,q: min(p,q, key=itemgetter(1)) 
min()doesn't mean__builtins__.min()people will hate you.