5 Feasible Python One-Liners That Can Be Used in Production Environment

One-liners can be practical and readable as well

The majority of Python one-liners are just for fun.

They should not be used for commercial software. Due to its poor readability.

Not to mention some “one-liners” are fake. Combining multiple commands into a single line and separating them with semicolons is not the real way to write an elegant one-liner.

However, during my 10 years of Python programming, I did meet some amazing, practical, readable and ready-for-production Python one-liners.

This article will introduce my 5 hand-picked Python one-liners.

Hope they can make you love Python more. 🙂

1. A One-Liner Function To Get Fibonacci Number

The Fibonacci sequence is an array that each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The numbers in this sequence are called Fibonacci numbers.

It’s not hard to write a Python function to get the Nth Fibonacci number. But how to implement it in one line of code?

The lambda function feature in Python can help us here:

2. Calculate Distance Between Two Vectors

In data science projects, calculating the distance between two vectors is a common scenario.

We can write a one-liner function to do it:

This time, it’s not only a lambda function, but also a zip() function which made it happen.

Of course, this is just for the Euclidean distance. How about other types of distances? Feel free to leave your solutions in the comments. 🙂

Following the same idea, lots of linear algebra operations can be implemented as Python one-liners, such as adding two vectors:

And transposing a matrix, which is a very classic example of the zip function:

3. Start an HTTP Server Right Now

Sometimes, you may need a simple HTTP server for temporary usage but don’t want to install and set up an Nginx or Apache server.

Python is your friend:

python3 -m http.server

Here is a detailed explanation of the above line of code:

4. Merge Multiple Python Dictionaries

If we have multiple dictionaries, such as three ones, the simplest way to merge them is as follows:

D={**d1,**d2,**d3}

5. Leverage the Power of List Comprehensions

Lots of good Python one-liners are based on list comprehensions.

Cause one list comprehension can include for loops, if conditions and even more complex expressions.

The following example shows how to filter a list based on different conditions. Every new filtered list is generated by a one-liner.

Firstly, they are readable. Secondly, they are elegant. In a word, they are Pythonic.

Conclusion

Many fancy one-liners are feasible for production environment. But some one-liners are super readable, clean and Pythonic. It’s worth applying them to commercial software.

To write a good one-liner, there are three essential Pythonic features you must know:

• Lambda functions
• Zip functions
• List comprehensions

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