> I'm trying to write an implementation of the amoeba function from > numerical recipes and need to be able to pass a function name and > parameter list to be called from within the amoeba function. Simply > passing the name as a string doesn't work since python doesn't know it > is a function and throws a typeerror. Is there something similar to > IDL's 'call_function' routine in python/numpy or a pythonic/numpy > means > of passing function names?
Just pass the function itself! For example: def foo(): print 6 def call_function_repeatedly(func, count): for i in range(count): func() call_function_repeatedly(foo, 2) # calls foo twice bar = foo bar() # still calls foo... we've just assigned the function to a different name In python, functions (and classes, and everything else) are first- class objects and can be assigned to variables, passed around, etc, etc, just as anything else. However, note that scipy.optimize.fmin implements the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm, which is (I think) the same as the "amoeba" optimizer. Also you might be interested in the openopt package, which implements more optimizers a bit more consistently than scipy.optimize. Zach _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion