Alright, Python decorators the coolest feature that nobody seems to know how to use properly (except for those fancy programmers who think they’re better than us). Chill out, don’t worry, because we’ve got your back! In this article, we’ll be diving into the world of Python decorators and explaining them in a way that even your grandma could understand.

First what are decorators? Well, let’s say you have a function called `my_function()` that does some fancy math stuff. But then one day, you realize that this function needs to be used more often than just within the confines of its own module. You want it to be available everywhere in your codebase! That’s where decorators come in they allow us to wrap a function with another function and modify its behavior without changing the original function itself.

Here are some key details about Python decorators:
– A decorator is a function that takes another function as an argument (the one we want to “decorate”) and returns a new function.
– The returned function will be executed instead of the original function when it’s called.
– Decorators can modify the behavior or output of the original function without changing its code.
– They are commonly used for adding logging, timing, caching, or other functionality to functions.

Here’s an example:

# This function is defined to perform some fancy math operations and return a result
def my_function():
    print("This is my fancy math function")
    
    # do some math stuff here...
    
    return result

# This decorator adds a prefix to the output of `my_function()`
def add_prefix(func):
    # This function is defined to wrap the original function and add a prefix to its output
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        print("Prefix: ")
        # The original function is called with the given arguments and keyword arguments
        result = func(*args, **kwargs)
        # The result is printed with the added prefix
        print(f"Result: {result}")
        return result
    
    # The wrapped function with the prefix decorator applied is returned
    return wrapper

# The `add_prefix` decorator is applied to our original function
@add_prefix
def my_function():
    print("This is my fancy math function")
    
    # do some math stuff here...
    
    return result

# Calling `my_function()` now prints a prefix and adds it to the output
my_function()

In this example, we’ve created a new function called `add_prefix()`, which takes another function (in this case, our original `my_function()`) as an argument. The `wrapper()` function is defined inside of `add_prefix()`. This wrapper function calls the original function and adds some prefix text to its output before returning it.

The final line in our example applies the decorator to our original function by assigning the result of calling `add_prefix(my_function)` back to the variable `my_function`. Now, when we call `my_function()`, it will print a prefix and add it to its output.

They’re not as scary as they seem, and can be incredibly useful for modifying function behavior without changing the original code.