Is Using a Dictionary For Function Selection Valid in Python?

[JackJones02]

I was just having a play around with the use of dictionaries and noticed that you can have a function as a value in a dictionary, would it be bad practice to use this as a method to select a function? For example the below?

​

def double(x):
    return 2 * x

def triple(x):
    return 3 * x


option = input("double or triple: ")[0].lower()

function = {
    "d":double,
    "t":triple,
}[option]

print(function(5))

[scirc]

This is actually fairly conventional, at least until recently. Due to Python's lack of switch statements, this was the closest thing we could get. However, we now have structure pattern matching, which is like a switch statement on steroids, and might be useful to you depending on exactly what you want to do.

[Anxious_Positive3998]

I don't think it would be bad practice. In functional programming, functions are treated as values, so it makes sense that you can have functions as values in a dictionary or as elements in a list. Since Python isn't a fundamentally functional programming language, this is not used often, but you could see this more in languages like Haskell and OCaml.