Would Anonymous Functions Help in Learning Programming/Python?

[Paul Rubin]

Bryan Olson <fakeaddress at nowhere.org> writes:
> How anonymous is that function when we can see that its name is 'h'?

h is out of scope after compose returns, so the function is anonymous
in the sense that there is no symbol bound to the function, through
which you can refer to it.

>      import math
> 
>      f = compose(math.sin, math.cos)
>      print f.__name__

I prefer to think of __name__ as just some debugging info stuck inside
the closure, though actually Python is introspective enough to be able
to let you locate and call a function whose __name__ is "h".  Of
course there might be more than one:

    f = compose(math.sin, math.cos)
    g = compose(math.sqrt, math.tan)
    print f.__name__, g.__name__

> Nevertheless, def is never a real anonymous function constructor.

Well, def constructs a function with a name, but the function can stay
around after the name goes away, after which I'd say the function is
nameless.  One could otherwise say that (lambda x: x+x) is not
anonymous either, since id(lambda ...) is a unique label stuck to it
like a __name__.

> If our concern is Python's suitability for studying principles of
> programming, I think I'm on stronger ground. Python is great for
> getting things done. It is easy to learn in the sense of learning
> to to use if for practical tasks. Python's actual semantics are not
> as neat and clean as some other languages.

Fair enough.