Python: Product of Elements of a List

Python has a built-in function to find the sum of the elements of a list:

alist = [10, 3, 8]
<strong><a href="http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#sum">sum</a></strong>(alist) # 21

But, there are no such built-in functions for other arithmetic operations. Defining such arithmetic functions that operate on sequences like lists is easy. Here is how to write a method that gives the product of the elements of a list:

import functools
import operator

def product(seq):
    """Product of a sequence."""
    return <strong><a href="http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html#functools.reduce">functools.reduce</a></strong>(<strong><a href="http://docs.python.org/library/operator.html#operator.mul">operator.mul</a></strong>, seq, 1)