any() function in Python with a callback

How about:

>>> any(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [1,2,'joe'])
True

It also works with all() of course:

>>> all(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [1,2,'joe'])
False

any function returns True when any condition is True.

>>> any(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [0 ,0, 1])
True # Returns True because 1 is greater than 0.


>>> any(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [0 ,0, 0])
False # Returns False because not a single condition is True.

Actually,the concept of any function is brought from Lisp or you can say from the function programming approach. There is another function which is just opposite to it is all

>>> all(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [1, 33, 22])
True # Returns True when all the condition satisfies.

>>> all(isinstance(e, int) and e > 0 for e in [1, 0, 1])
False # Returns False when a single condition fails.

These two functions are really cool when used properly.

You should use a "generator expression" - that is, a language construct that can consume iterators and apply filter and expressions on then on a single line:

For example (i ** 2 for i in xrange(10)) is a generator for the square of the first 10 natural numbers (0 to 9)

They also allow an "if" clause to filter the itens on the "for" clause, so for your example you can use:

any (e for e in [1, 2, 'joe'] if isinstance(e, int) and e > 0)

While the others gave good Pythonic answers (I'd just use the accepted answer in most cases), I just wanted to point out how easy it is to make your own utility function to do this yourself if you really prefer it:

def any_lambda(iterable, function):
  return any(function(i) for i in iterable)

In [1]: any_lambda([1, 2, 'joe'], lambda e: isinstance(e, int) and e > 0
Out[1]: True
In [2]: any_lambda([-1, '2', 'joe'], lambda e: isinstance(e, int) and e > 0)
Out[2]: False

I think I'd at least define it with the function parameter first though, since that'd more closely match existing built-in functions like map() and filter():

def any_lambda(function, iterable):
  return any(function(i) for i in iterable)