a = b = 1 just syntactic sugar?

[Steven Taschuk]

Quoth junk:
  [...]
> If you care, I wrote a little function that will return the current 
> function within a block.  This means, you can have anonymous recursive 
> functions like this:
> 
> import selfref
> factorial = lambda x: ((x==0)*1) or (x * selfref.myself(x-1))

This is certainly clever, but imho good style demands writing even
so simple and familiar a function more directly.  Besides the
simple loss of clarity, I don't see how (without helper functions
defined more sensibly) you'd add a check to the above that x >= 0
(raising a ValueError if it isn't).  Or a docstring, for that
matter.

I can't think offhand of a useful recursive function simple enough
to be clear when written this way; in other words, I can't think
of a case where I'd actually use this.

> Here is the code:
> 
> def myself(*args):
>     prevFrame = sys._getframe(1)
>     myOwnCode = prevFrame.f_code
>     myOwnFuncObj = new.function(myOwnCode, globals())
>     return myOwnFuncObj(*args)
> 
> The only thing this doesn't do is to capture default arguments!!!
  [...]

I don't see the problem with default arguments:

    >>> f = lambda a, b=5: (b<1 and 1 or a*selfref.myself(a, b-1))
    >>> f(3)
    243

Am I missing something?

Keyword arguments are definitely missing, of course, but that lack
is easily remedied:

    def myself(*args, **kwargs):
        prevFrame = sys._getframe(1)
        myOwnCode = prevFrame.f_code
        myOwnFuncObj = new.function(myOwnCode, globals())
        return myOwnFuncObj(*args, **kwargs)

I'm fairly sure you don't want to use globals() here, though.
Here's why:

    >>> import selfref
    >>> x = 3
    >>> f = lambda n: n < 1 and 1 or x + selfref.myself(n-1)
    >>> f(2)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      [...]
    NameError: global name 'x' is not defined

What you want is, I expect, prevFrame.f_globals.

-- 
Steven Taschuk                             staschuk at telusplanet.net
"I may be wrong but I'm positive."  -- _Friday_, Robert A. Heinlein