Is There a Python Equivalent to the Sum() Function for Multiplication?

The Elusive Product Function - A Pythonic Alternative

While Python's sum() function conveniently provides the sum of numbers in an iterable, there seems to be a noticeable lack of an analogous function for multiplication. Understandably, developers often seek a function that performs a similar operation but for multiplying values, similar to sum().

However, despite its intuitive appeal, such a built-in function, such as product(), does not exist in Python's standard library. Historically, creator Guido van Rossum vetoed the idea due to potential confusion with the multiplication operator (*).

Despite the absence of a dedicated product() function, there are alternative approaches to achieve multiplication accumulation. One solution is to use the reduce() function in conjunction with the operator module. Here's an example:

from functools import reduce
import operator

product = reduce(operator.mul, (3, 4, 5), 1)  # Initialize with 1 for multiplication accumulation
# Result: 60

In this example, reduce() applies operator.mul to the elements of the sequence (3, 4, 5) and accumulates the results into the variable product. Note that we initialize product with 1 to avoid starting with 0, which would incorrectly multiply all elements to 0.

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