Question regarding a recent article on informit.com

[Ian Bicking]

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 12:50, Ben S wrote:
> "Python now includes iterators, generators, list comprehensions, nested
> scopes, type unification-and complete Unicode compatibility. The older
> functional programming style constructs, such as map, filter, reduce,
> and lambda are deprecated, even if it's unlikely that they will
> disappear. "
> 
> Is this second sentence true, or is that just an opinion from someone
> who favours the imperative style to the functional style? What else
> could have been meant by this?

The alternative to map and filter, list comprehension, is not less
functional, it's just a different style (Haskell-style, as opposed to
Lisp-style).  As a side effect you don't need lambda to use list
comprehension.

That lambda is a black sheep of the language has always been true,
evidenced by the syntax restrictions.  Lambda also is not the same as
functional programming, but just a particular (again Lisp) style of
functional programming.  Because of Python's semantics -- and improved
with nested scoping -- anything you can do with a lambda you can do with
a function definition.  You can still *do* all the functional things
without lambda, but sometimes it might be more difficult.

Whether Python is a functional language is more defined by its library
and conventions -- do you modify objects in-place, or return modified
copies?  From that perspective large portions of Python code are not
functional, but that language changes don't effect that one way or the
other.

  Ian