Tom Anderson wrote: > So, if you're a pythonista who loves map and lambda, and disagrees with > Guido, what's your background? Functional or not?
I avoid map sometimes, because I find its syntax less readable than list (and expression) comprehensions. But occasionally it is the most readable way to do something, and I wouldn't want to lose it. Lambda serves a very specific purpose: declaring small, in-place functions which are no bigger than a single expression. I do this often enough that I DO want special syntax for it. But I'll admit that I wish "lambda" were about 5 or 6 characters shorter and didn't have such an obscure name. I disagree (and I've mentioned it before) with Guido's plan to remove these eventually. I'm perfectly satisfied with the alternate plan to move the functions like map to a module (perhaps named "functional"). (That doesn't help with lambda, though since it requires syntactical support.) And my background is definitely NOT functional: I started with Basic, then learned Pascal well, then _lots_ of other languages (including Lisp) to an academic level. I've been using Java and Python heavily now for about 8 or 9 years. I _DO_ however feel quite comfortable using a functional approach *for certain problems*. -- Michael Chermside -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
