Python Decorators: Wrap Functions Without Touching Them

You have a function that works fine. Now you need to time it. Or retry it on failure. Or log every call. The naive solution is to edit the function body — but then you have to do it again for the next function, and the next.

Decorators solve this by wrapping behavior around a function without changing the function itself.

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The mental model

A decorator is a function that takes a function and returns a (usually enhanced) function.

# This: @timer def generate_chapter (): ...

# Is exactly the same as: def generate_chapter (): ... generate_chapter = timer ( generate_chapter )

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That's the whole mechanism. @timer is syntactic sugar for reassigning the name.…