Is a Python function stored as an object? [closed]

Question

This query is in continuation with link to understand further on this point:

In the case of functions, you have an object which has certain fields, which contain e. g. the code in terms of bytecode, the number of parameters it has, etc.

My question:

1) How do i visualise a function being represented as an object?(NPE answered this question here)

2) How do i visualise an higher order function being represented as an object?

3) How do i visualise modules being represented as an object? say 'import operator'

4) Are operators like '+' '>' '!=' '==' '=' are also mapped to some object methods? say for expr 'check = 2 < 3', Does this internally call some method of type(2) or type(3) to evaluate '<' operator?

Answer 1

All this is saying is that, in Python, functions are objects like any other.

For example:

In [5]: def f(): pass

Now f is an object of type function:

In [6]: type(f)
Out[6]: function

If you examine it more closely, it contains a whole bunch of fields:

In [7]: dir(f)
Out[7]: 
['__call__',
 ...
 'func_closure',
 'func_code',
 'func_defaults',
 'func_dict',
 'func_doc',
 'func_globals',
 'func_name']

To pick one example, f.func_name is the function's name:

In [8]: f.func_name
Out[8]: 'f'

and f.func_code contains the code:

In [9]: f.func_code
Out[9]: <code object f at 0x11b5ad0, file "<ipython-input-5-87d1450e1c01>", line 1>

If you are really curious, you can drill down further:

In [10]: dir(f.func_code)
Out[10]: 
['__class__',
 ...
 'co_argcount',
 'co_cellvars',
 'co_code',
 'co_consts',
 'co_filename',
 'co_firstlineno',
 'co_flags',
 'co_freevars',
 'co_lnotab',
 'co_name',
 'co_names',
 'co_nlocals',
 'co_stacksize',
 'co_varnames']

and so on.

(The above output was produced using Python 2.7.3.)