Suppose that a quantum circuit with K elementary gates is known for a unitary matrix U , and assume that U m is a scalar matrix for some positive integer m. We show that a function of U can be realized on a quantum computer with at most O(mK + m 2 log m) elementary gates. The functions of U are realized by a generic quantum circuit, which has a particularly simple structure. Among other results, we obtain efficient circuits for the fractional Fourier transform.