I've read with interest the continuing debate about 'lambda' and its place in Python.
Just to say that personally I think its an elegant and useful construct for many types of programming task (particularly number theory/artificial intelligence/genetic algorithms)
I can't think why anyone would be proposing to do away with it. Sometimes an anonymous function is just what you need and surely it just reflects the python philosophy of everything being an object (in this case a code object).
The *concept* is fine, but the current syntax is seriously ugly, and the keyword used creates false expectations for those familiar with what lambda calculus actually *is*.
If the lambda syntax were a new proposal to be added to the language now, it would never be accepted.
Unfortunately, its existence tends to stymie efforts to come up with a *Pythonic* way of spelling the same idea. The people who want to get rid of lambda completely think coming up with a new spelling is a waste of time - "Just define the damn function already!" is their rallying cry. The people who want real lambda calculus complain that they still can't put statements inside expressions - they shout "Give me real anonymous functions, not this neutered junk that restricts me to a single expression!". And, of course, there's always someone to complain that supporting a new spelling would violate TOOWTDI - "But, but, we already have def and lambda, why are you trying to come up with yet another way to create a function?".
Anyway, check out AlternateLambdaSyntax on the python.org Wiki if you haven't already. For my own part, I'd like a new spelling. Something that is more stylistically in line with a genexp would be significantly preferable to the status quo (e.g "(x*x from (x))" aligns better with "(x*x for x in seq)" than "lambda x: x*x" does).
Following on naturally from that last point I would also like to 'deprecate' the use of the expression 'syntactic sugar' on these pages. All high level languages (Python included) are nothing but syntactic sugar designed to conceal the ugliness of what actually gets sent to the CPU to make it all happen.
Yup, you're right. But 'syntactic sugar' often isn't used in a negative way - it's more descriptive than anything. It's any language change that's designed to make common idioms easier to use.
Cheers, Nick. No comment on the goto thing ;)
--
Nick Coghlan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
