Re: Question on lambdas

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Date	Tue, 9 Dec 2014 12:53:05 +1100
Subject	Re: Question on lambdas
From	Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Christoph Becker <cmbecker69@gmx.de> wrote:
> Ben Finney wrote:
>
>> It's best to remember that ‘lambda’ is syntactic sugar for creating a
>> function; the things it creates are not special in any way, they are
>> normal functions, not “lambdas”.
>
> Could you please elaborate why ‘lambda’ does not create “lambdas”.  I'm
> a Python beginner (not new to programming, though), and rather confused
> about your statement.

For the same reason that "def" doesn't create "defs", and "for"
doesn't create fors (uhh... the Force?). Both "lambda" and "def"
create functions. Functions are things that can be called, and they're
created by the "def" statement, the "lambda" expression, and very VERY
occasionally, by directly calling the function constructor. You could
distinguish between "lambda functions" and "def functions" if you
like, but the distinction is almost never significant. In fact,
usually you don't even need to distinguish between functions and other
callables (types, objects with __call__ methods, bound method objects,
etc, etc, etc).

ChrisA

Thread

Re: Question on lambdas Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2014-12-09 10:58 +1100
  Re: Question on lambdas Christoph Becker <cmbecker69@gmx.de> - 2014-12-09 02:44 +0100
    Re: Question on lambdas Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2014-12-09 06:38 +0000
  Re: Question on lambdas Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-12-09 12:53 +1100
  Re: Question on lambdas Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-12-08 21:09 -0500
  Re: Question on lambdas Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2014-12-09 16:23 +1100
    Re: Question on lambdas "Christoph M. Becker" <cmbecker69@arcor.de> - 2014-12-09 13:43 +0100
  Re: Question on lambdas Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-12-08 22:44 -0800

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