[Terry Reedy]
Some people write
somename = lambda args: expression
instead of the more obvious (to most people) and, dare I say, standard
def somename(args): return expression
Though def-statements are usually the best way to go,
there are some reasonable cases where the first form reads better.
I say leave it to the programmer to decide. Experience will quickly
teach the def-statement is more flexible.
Another thought is that I often give the advice that if a long-line becomes
hard to read, then an easy solution is to pull-out an inner expression
and give it a name. This is especially true when the intended purpose
of the inner expression isn't obvious and giving it a name adds clarity.
I would have to burden this advice with an admonition to go further
and move the relevant code farther away from where it is used:
for k,g in groupby(iterable, key=lambda r: (r[0].lower(), r[5].lower())): ...
lastname_firstname = lambda r: (r[0].lower(), r[5].lower())
for k, g in groupby(iterable, key=lastname_firstname): ...
That transformation adds clarity. Going further and creating a separate
def-statement outside the current function would just move the relevant
code farther away and impair readability.
Also, I'm somewhat opposed to using PEP 8 in this way. Somehow, the
PEPs recommendations seem to get occasionally interpreted as law.
IMO, the PEP should be limited to things that have a real impact on
code being maintained by multiple programmers. It should not grow
into a general purpose set of situation independent prejudgments about
which constructs should be favored over others (i.e. programmer x
hates for-else so those should be avoided in favor of using flags or
programmer y thinks it's uncool to have a return-statement anywhere
but the end of a function).
What do our style mavens think?
-1
Raymond
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