Understanding Callable in Python

Functions and classes are the most common things we use in our daily development. We invoke them, pass them around, and yet never wonder what makes them so amazing. Well the short answer is callable protocol; for the long answer keep reading!

Functions and classes are the most common things we use in our daily development. We invoke them, pass them around, and yet never wonder what makes them so amazing. Well the short answer is callable protocol; for the long answer keep reading!

Definition 📢

Objects defining the __call__ method is known as callable. Or basically callable is anything you can call using the parenthesis () and pass arguments to it. Yes I am basically talking about a function.

call method 🤙

__call__ is one of the most interesting dunder method in Python. It is what most of the built-in functions make use of. If we peek into the type of some of these built-in functions then we often see the result as a class.

>>> range
<class 'range'>

>>> zip 
<class 'zip'>
>>> int
<class 'int'>

You get the gist. But how is a class acting as a function? I mean you can just zip(iterable1, iterable2)and you get your result without further invoking any other methods of the class.

Just imagine using **`zip` like if it were a normal class.**

processor = ['Intel', 'Ryzen', 'Apple Silicon']
year = [2018, 2019, 2020]

zipped = zip(processor, year)
zipped.start()

This definitely isn’t intuitive to work with. So how does it work?

Using call method 🔨

Well behind the scenes it’s because of the __call__ method. This method is used in classes if we want the instance of the class to be callable.

What do I mean by that? Let’s take an example of a class that prints the square of a number.Functions and classes are the most common things we use in our daily development. We invoke them, pass them around, and yet never wonder what makes them so amazing. Well the short answer is callable protocol; for the long answer keep reading!

Definition 📢

Objects defining the __call__ method is known as callable. Or basically callable is anything you can call using the parenthesis () and pass arguments to it. Yes I am basically talking about a function.

call method 🤙

__call__ is one of the most interesting dunder method in Python. It is what most of the built-in functions make use of. If we peek into the type of some of these built-in functions then we often see the result as a class.

>>> range
<class 'range'>

>>> zip 
<class 'zip'>
>>> int
<class 'int'>

You get the gist. But how is a class acting as a function? I mean you can just zip(iterable1, iterable2)and you get your result without further invoking any other methods of the class.

Just imagine using **`zip` like if it were a normal class.**

processor = ['Intel', 'Ryzen', 'Apple Silicon']
year = [2018, 2019, 2020]

zipped = zip(processor, year)
zipped.start()

This definitely isn’t intuitive to work with. So how does it work?

software-engineering software-development python programming coding

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