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[Python-Dev] Let's just *keep* lambda

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Tue Feb 7 22:43:15 CET 2006 
On 2/6/06, Christopher Armstrong <radeex at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> > Brett Cannon wrote:
> > > But I know that everyone and their email client is against me on this
> > > one, so I am not going to really try to tear into this.  But I do
> > > think that lambda needs a renaming.  Speaking as someone who still
> > > forgets that Python's lambda is not the same as those found in
> > > functional languages
> >
> > Can you elaborate on that point? I feel that Python's lambda is exactly
> > the same as the one in Lisp. Sure, the Lisp lambda supports multiple
> > sequential expressions (the "progn" feature), but I understand that
> > this is just "an extension" (although one that has been around several
> > decades).
> >
> > Of course, Python's expressions are much more limited as Lisp's (where
> > you really can have macros and special forms in as the "expression"
> > in a lambda), but the lambda construct itself seems to be the very
> > same one.
>
> If we phrase it somewhat differently, we can see that lambdas are
> different in Python and Lisp, in a very practical way. First:
> Everything in Lisp is an expression. There's no statement, in Lisp,
> that isn't also an expression. Lambdas in Lisp can contain arbitrary
> expressions; therefore you can put any language construct inside a
> lambda. In Python, you cannot put any language construct inside a
> lambda. Python's and Lisp's lambdas are effectively totally different.
>

Chris is exactly right in what I meant.  Lisp-like language do not
have the statement/expression dichotomy.  For instance, function
definitions are syntactic sugar for defining a lambda expression that
is bound to a name.  This only works in Python if the function body is
a single expression which is not the entire language.  For Lisp,
though, that can be anything allowed in the language, so the abilities
are different.

-Brett
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