operatormul

Operatormul is a function in Python’s standard library that provides a callable interface to the multiplication operator. Commonly accessed as operator.mul, it takes two operands and returns their product, serving as the functional equivalent of the a * b expression.

The function determines the result by invoking the left operand’s __mul__ method with the right operand; if that is not implemented, it tries the right operand’s __rmul__ method. This behavior makes operatormul compatible with both built-in types and user-defined types that implement these special methods. If neither operation is supported, a TypeError is raised.

Examples of its use include mul(3, 4) which yields 12, mul('a', 3) which yields 'aaa', and mul([1, 2], 2) which yields [1, 2, 1, 2]. It is also useful in functional programming styles, such as with map or reduce, for applying multiplication across sequences. For instance, list(map(mul, [1, 2], [3, 4])) returns [3, 8]. operatormul thus provides a flexible, language-integrated way to perform multiplication in contexts that require a function object rather than an operator symbol.