Improving Python Function Usability with wrapping

Improving Function Usability: A Practical Tip

Today I was doing a Solveit tutorial and it touched on a simple way to improve the usability of functions without altering their core behaviour.

Wrapping Functions for Easier Use

Take Python’s re.finditer, for example. It returns an iterator, which you might often need to convert into a list for processing. Instead of repeating list(re.finditer(...)) all over your code, you can wrap it in a helper function:

import re

def finditer(*args, **kw): 
    return list(re.finditer(*args, **kw))

# Example usage
pattern = r'\d+'
text = "The year is 2024, and the day is 28th."
matches = finditer(pattern, text)
print(matches)  # Output: [<re.Match object>, <re.Match object>]

Key Points for Wrapping Functions

1. Maintain Original Logic

You need to make sure your wrapper explicitly calls the original function (e.g., re.finditer). If you don’t do this, you’ll lose the functionality of the original function.

2. Avoid Overwriting the Original

Instead of reassigning re.finditer to the new function (which might have unexpected side effects) you can use a different name - or a similar name that isn’t scoped the same way - i.e. finditer instead of re.finditer.

3. Keep all the params the same with *args and **kw

Use *args (to capture positional arguments as a tuple) and **kw (to capture keyword arguments as a dictionary). You pass them to the original function.

• Tags:
• Python
• Coding
• Til