How can I get rid of lambda

[Roy Smith]

sandj.williams at gte.net wrote:
> I'm working with IBM packed decimal data.  The following code works OK,
> but there are millions of rows and 10 to 50 columns per row.  I want as
> much speed as I can get.

Python is great at lots of stuff.  Getting the most speed possible out 
of 10s or 100's of millions of math operations is not one of them.  This 
sounds like something you might want to write in a true compiled 
language.