[Python-Dev] Recommend accepting PEP 312 -- Simple Implicit Lambda

[Guido van Rossum]

[Nick Coghlan]
> And here we see why I'm such a fan of the term 'deferred expression'
> instead of 'anonymous function'.
> 
> Python's lambda expressions *are* the former, but they are
> emphatically *not* the latter.

Let me emphatically disagree. Your POV is entirely syntactical, which
IMO is a shallow perspective. Semantically, lambdas ARE anonymous
functions, and that's what counts.

Since "deferred expression" is not defined in Python, you can't
reasonably argue about whether that's what lambdas are, but
intuitively for me the term refers to something more lightweight than
lambdas.

Now, whether the use cases for lambdas are better served by anonymous
functions or by something else that might be called deferred
expression, I don't know yet. But as long as we are describing the
present state we should call a spade a spade, etc.

(Alas, no time to follow the rest of this thread -- vacationing with
little connectivity until EuroPython starts next week.)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)