3 ms·
Ask HN: What is the meaning of "Python’s broken notion of lambda"*?
* Hal Abelson in http://www.codequarterly.com/2011/hal-abelson/
- tmhedberg 15y agoHe may be referring to the fact that lambda expressions in Python are limited to a single statement. If you want anything more complex than that, you have to define a function elsewhere and pass it by name.
- mechnik 15y agoThank you for explaining this.
- kwantam 15y agoTwo possible issues. As tmhedberg says (more or less), they're second-class citizens: they may contain one expression, and cannot contain any statements (e.g., 'print'). A more important issue: in LISP, ML, and other languages with a "proper" lambda, the value of a lambda expression is a lexical closure. Python's lambdas are dynamically scoped, which certainly qualifies as broken. See, e.g., http://math.andrej.com/2009/04/09/pythons-lambda-is-broken/ http://math.andrej.com/2009/04/09/pythons-lambda-is-broken/