[Python-3000] A plea for anonymous functions

[Greg Ewing]

Talin wrote:

> From my point of view, both 'with' and generator expressions are 
> limited, special-case solutions to a general problem - the desire to be 
> able to use and manipulate unnamed blocks of code as first-class 
> objects.

I don't think it's as simple as that. Back when the with
statement was first being discussed, I suggested that it
should be implemented by passing the body as an anonymous
function. That would have been a very simple way of doing
it, but there were problems, such as what to do if the
body contained break or continue statements. In the end,
Guido rejected the anonymous-function approach, and we
ended up with something that is rather more elaborate.

So we have a situation where there was no syntactical
barrier to treating a code block as an anonymous function,
but we chose not to do so. That seems to cast doubt on
the idea that first-class code blocks would solve all
the problems you suggest they would solve.

--
Greg