What can you do in LISP that you can't do in Python

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Tue May 22 12:00:10 EDT 2001


"Hannah Schroeter" <hannah at schlund.de> wrote in message
news:9edt7h$ubg$1 at c3po.schlund.de...
    ...
> Facit: Smalltalk's blocks, Lisp's and Python's lambdas are just the same:
> unevaluated (but possibly compiled!) code, optionally with formal
> parameters.

...but Python's lambdas are limited to be just *expressions*,
which IS a serious limitation since so much in Python is in
terms of *statements*.  A Python *FUNCTION* is not affected
by this limitation -- *IT* can indeed be ANY piece of compiled
but unevaluated code, with parameters.  And the only, let's
say, "limitation", compared to lambda, is that you have to
give the function a _name_.  That's a pretty modest limitation:-).


Alex






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