On Sun, 4 May 2008 01:24:54 am Alex Martelli wrote:
> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:32 PM, Mike Klaas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote: ...
>
> >  Sorry, that was a bad example.  It is obviously silly if the
> > return value of the function is callable.
>
> ...and yet it's *exactly* what keeps happening to lambda-happy
> programmers -- in production code as well as examples, and in
> major/famous projects too.  E.g., a simple google code search shows
> many Zope versions containing "Bucket=lambda:{}" instead of the
> obvious "Bucket=dict", 

In fairness, up until a few years ago, Bucket=dict wouldn't have worked. 
I'm sure there's a lot of Python programmers who learnt the language 
with version < 2.0 who still have blind-spots when it comes to types. I 
know I do (but I'm getting better with practice).

Besides, would that be any better written as this?

def Bucket(): return {}

I think not. This is not a "named lambda" problem, this is a "developer 
doesn't know how to use types" problem.


While we're discussing named lambdas, and at the risk of dragging this 
thread out even longer, here's one example where I would use one:

def parrot(args, transformation=None):
    if transformation is None: # Use an identity function.
        transformation = lambda x: x  
    for arg in args:
        do_something_with(transformation(arg))


Does anybody have any constructive comments to make about this usage?



-- 
Steven D'Aprano
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