On Feb 14, 11:46 am, "Gabriel Genellina" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > En Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:04:17 -0300, Andy Dingley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > escribió: > > > I still don't understand what a lambda is _for_ in Python. I know what > > they are, I know what the alternatives are, but I still haven't found > > an instance where it permits something novel to be done that couldn't > > be done otherwise (if maybe not so neatly). > > A lambda is a shorthand for a simple anonymous function. Any lambda can be > written as a function: > > lambda args: expression > > is the same as: > > def __anonymous(args): return expression > > (but the inverse is not true; lambda only allows a single expression in > the function body). > > Except for easy event binding in some GUIs, deferred argument evaluation, > and maybe some other case, the're not used much anyway. Prior common usage > with map and filter can be replaced by list comprehensions (a lot more > clear, and perhaps as fast - any benchmark?) > > -- > Gabriel Genellina
They are still useful for reduce(), which has no listcomp equivalent that I know of. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
