[Python-Dev] Let's just keep lambda (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Wed Feb 8 19:58:46 CET 2006

On 2/8/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

At 10:07 AM 2/8/2006 -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote: >On 2/8/06, Patrick Collison <patrick at collison.ie> wrote: > > And to think that people thought that keeping "lambda", but changing > > the name, would avoid all the heated discussion... :-) > >Note that I'm not participating in any attempts to "improve" lambda. > >Just about the only improvement I'd like to see is to add parentheses >around the arguments, so you'd write lambda(x, y): x**y instead of >lambda x, y: x**y.

lambda(x,y) looks like a function call until you hit the ':'; we don't usually have keywords that work that way.

I agree with Phillip. Making it look more like a function definition, I think, is a bad move to make. The thing is quirky as-is, let's not partially mask that fact.

How about (lambda x,y: x**y)? It seems like all the recently added constructs (conditionals, yield expressions, generator expressions) take on this rather lisp-y look. :)

Or, if you wanted to eliminate the "lambda" keyword, then "(from x,y return x**y)" could be a "function expression", and it looks even more like most of the recently-added expression constructs. Well, actually, I guess to mirror the style of conditionals and genexps more closely, it would have to be something like "(return x**y from x,y)" or "(x**y from x,y)". Ugh. Never mind, let's just leave it the way it is today. :)

(use x, y, in x**y) is the best I can think of off the top of my head. But if Guido is not budging on tweaking lambda in any way other than parentheses, then I say just leave the busted thing as it is and let it be the wart that was never removed.

-Brett

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list