Is manipulating a global function definition inside another function bad practice?-CodePudding

I have a function called set_func that is 25 lines long. Inside it calls update.

def set_func(table: str, identifier=None, **kwargs) -> None:
    ... # does stuff with arguments
    query = update(table, kwargs, identifier)
    ...
    execute(query)

I want to declare a function called delete_func that does the exact same thing, but instead of calling update it would call delete.

My code:

def delete_func(table: str, identifier=None) -> None:
    global update
    backup_update = deepcopy(update)
    assert backup_update is not update

    update = delete
    try:
        return set_func(table, identifier)
    finally:
        update = backup_update

This works, buy it seems bad practice. Is there another way to do this without changing set_func? Is it bad code?

CodePudding user response：

Since functions are first class, I would probably pass whatever work was to be done into your method as a parameter. Alternatively, you could pass in a flag and internally determine how to process the work. I would definitely NOT change the implementation as you have done here even if it technically worked.

I might do something like this:

def fn_update(table: str, identifier, **kwargs) -> None:
    # do whatever you do to just update
    return "query"

def fn_delete(table: str, identifier, **kwargs) -> None:
    # do whatever you do to just delete
    return "query"

def set_func(fn_work, table: str, identifier=None, **kwargs) -> None:
    ... # does stuff with arguments
    query = fn_work(table, identifier, kwargs)
    ...
    execute(query)