Elementwise provides a proxy object for iterables which supports chained method calls, as well as elementwise expressions and some built-in functions. Example: class ExampleList(ElementwiseProxyMixin, list): def __new__(cls, iterable): return list.__new__(cls, iterable) foo = ExampleList([1, 2, 3, 4]) # You could also do: efoo = ElementwiseProxy(foo) efoo = foo.each assert list(efoo.bit_length()) == [1, 2, 2, 3] print "bit length: ", list(efoo.bit_length()) assert list(efoo + 1) == [2, 3, 4, 5] print "with addition of 1: ", list(efoo + 1) assert list(efoo * 2) == [2, 4, 6, 8] print "with multiplication by 2: ", list(efoo * 2) assert list(efoo == 2) == [False, True, False, False] print "testing equality: ", efoo == 2 assert list((efoo + 1) * 2 + 3) == [7, 9, 11, 13] print "chaining addition and multiplication: ", (efoo + 1) * 2 + 3 Each ElementwiseProxy also has a "parent" attribute so you can backtrack in the chain as needed rather than store each intermediate value, if you think you might need them. There are still some issues with proper support of things like bool() and int(), which refuse to return things that are not of the correct type. Get it: PyPi: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/elementwise/0.111220 GitHub: https://github.com/nathan-rice/Elementwise This was developed as a proof of concept for expanding the role of element-wise syntax in python, and to that end I welcome comments. Nathan Rice