Talin wrote:
Matt Chisholm wrote:
+1 to handling anonymous functions/lambdas the way JavaScript does. It's the only thing I like better about JavaScript than Python.
Unfortunately, there's no way in Python to have a statement inside of an expression (because statements are delimited by line ends and indentation). Many people have attempted this, none have succeeded. Don't go there, you'll just be opening up old wounds...
From my experience anonymous functions are very useful when writing event-based code, such as client-side event handlers for web browsers with JavaScript, Expect event handlers in Tcl/Perl, and GUI event handlers in any language. I think having a simple, readable way to define anonymous functions in Python would allow writing more concise and readable Python code for such applications, thus making Python an even better Jack-of-all-trades.
However, even if it were easy to implement with clear, simple syntax, I'm not sure this would be a good idea; I'd leave this to more experienced language developers. - Tal