[Tutor] fancy list things

[Marilyn Davis]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Karl Pflästerer wrote:

> On  6 Feb 2004, Marilyn Davis <- marilyn at deliberate.com wrote:
> 
> > Is it true that you can *always* replace map() and filter() with a
> > list comprehension?  But you can never replace reduce()?
> 
> Yes. No (well it is possible but extremly ugly):
> 
> >>> class Foo:
> ...     def __init__(self, x):
> ...             self.x = x
> ...     def set (self, v):
> ...             self.x += v
> ...             return self.x
> ... 
> >>> [f.set(e) for e in range(10)].pop()
> 45
> >>> reduce(lambda m, n: m+n, range(10), 0)
> 45
> 
> So with some side effects you get something which looks a bit like
> reduce (but has nothing to do with it).

I'm sorry, I meant that you can't replace it with a list comprehension
of any sort?  And zip() can't be replaced with any sort of list
comprehension.  Right?

> 
> map() and filter() on the other hand can be replaced by list
> comprehensions.
> 
> 
> > Can anyone give me a reasonable example of lambda?
> 
> What do you mean exactly?  Lambda calculus? Lambda in Python?
> 
> In Python lambda can be used to build simple (very simple sadly)
> anonymous expressions (no statements) which can get used at places where
> you think it's not worth writing a function with a name.  But their
> usage is very weakly in Python, you can't compare it with languages like
> Lisp (CL, Scheme) or Haskell.  But that's no bug it's a feature :-)

Is it only useful in map() and filter() and reduce()?  And other
places where you want to hand a little function to a function?  comp()
for example.  Is there another class of examples?

I'm teaching python for the first time and want to be as solid as
possible on this stuff.

Thank you.

Marilyn

> 
> 
> 
>    Karl
> 

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