Fate of lambda, Functional Programming in Python...

[Jeff Sandys]

"Christopher A. Craig" wrote:
> 
> "Jared Cohen" <Jared.Cohen at noaa.gov> writes:
> 
> >   Agreed! I'm currently building a GUI in Tkinter, with event 
> >   handlers and callbacks all over the place. The lambda form is an 
> >   absolute MUST for this kind of thing!
> 
> Nobody is talking about removing the ability to pass functions, just
> the actual "lambda" form.
> 
> You can still build a GUI by doing
> 
> def spam(stuff):
>   def eggs(parrot):
>     return 5+parrot
>   return eggs
> 
> You just can't do
> 
> def spam(stuff):
>   return lambda foo: 5+parrot
> 
> I can't think of a situation where you _really_ need the second 
> (and much more limited) form.

How about this use of lambda?
(from another post 'RE: How to sort this kind of list easily?' today)

| > > Hi,all
| > >    I have a list like [(id,string),...],for example:
| > > 
| > >    [(1,'xxxxx'),(7,'ppppp'),(4,'gggggg'),...]
| > > 
| > >    I want to sort this list according to the id of each element. 
| > >    After sorting,the list will become:
| > > 
| > >    [(1,'xxxxx'),(4,'gggggg'),(7,'ppppp')...]
| >
| > list.sort sorts tuples by first argument, then second &c. If you
want
| > a custom sort order, look at the decorate-sort-undecorate pattern.
| 
|  Or if you want to sort only on your Id, use a lambda:
|  l.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x[0],y[0]))
| 
|  To force sorting on just the nth element of the tuples, replace 0
with 
|  n in the above.
|

I think that lambda should be unlimited and expanded.  It already has
the 
colon, block delimiter, so allow lambda to be a multistatement and
multiline
indented block!

Thanks,
Jeff Sandys