Nick Coghlan wrote: > Donovan Baarda wrote: > >>As I see it, a lambda is an anonymous function. An anonymous function is >>a function without a name. > > > And here we see why I'm such a fan of the term 'deferred expression' > instead of 'anonymous function'.
But isn't a function just a deferred expression with a name :-) As a person who started out writing assembler where every "function" I wrote was a macro that got expanded inline, the distiction is kinda blurry to me. > Python's lambda expressions *are* the former, but they are > emphatically *not* the latter. Isn't that because lambda's have the limitation of not allowing statements, only expressions? I know this limitation avoids side-effects and has significance in some formal (functional?) languages... but is that what Python is? In the Python I use, lambda's are always used where you are too lazy to define a function to do it's job. To me, anonymous procedures/functions would be a superset of "deferred expressions", and if the one stone fits perfectly in the slingshot we have and can kill multiple birds... why hunt for another stone? Oh yeah Raymond: on the "def defines some variable name"... are you joking? You forgot the smiley :-) I don't get what the problem is with mixing statement and expression semantics... from a practial point of view, statements just offer a superset of expression functionality. If there really is a serious practical reason why they must be limited to expressions, why not just raise an exception or something if the "anonymous function" is too complicated... I did some fiddling and it seems lambda's can call methods and stuff that can have side effects, which kinda defeats what I thought was the point of "statements vs expressions"... I guess I just don't understand... maybe I'm just thick :-) > Anyway, the AlternateLambdaSyntax Wiki page has a couple of relevant > entries under 'real closures'. Where is that wiki BTW? I remember looking at it ages ago but can't find the link anymore. -- Donovan Baarda _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
