map/filter/reduce/lambda opinions and background unscientific mini-survey

[David Abrahams]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bdesth.quelquechose at free.quelquepart.fr> writes:

> I discovered FP with David Mertz's papers about FP in Python. I had 
> never read nor write a line of lisp, scheme, haskell, caml etc before. 
> And I'd certainly start thinking of choosing another MYFL if anonymous 
> functions where to disappear from Python. Note that I said "anonymous 
> functions", not "lambda". Concerning map, filter, reduce etc, these 
> functions can live in a separate module, and this wouldn't bother me. 
> But anonymous functions are part of the language syntax, so there is no 
> work-around.

Actually I'm pretty sure there is.  It should be possible to
re-implement the Boost Lambda library in Python:

   http://www.boost.org/libs/lambda

Compared with in-language lambda support it would have the advantage
of brevity and clarity for very small functions, but there are lots of
disadvantages, too.  I wonder how Guido would feel if people started
using a (relatively) slow library solution with odd warts as a
consequence of dropping real lambdas.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com