conditionals in lambdas?

[Joshua Muskovitz]

Although the general case of adding conditionals in a lambda isn't allowed,
if you can restructure the requirement to an expression, then you can make
it work.  For your example:

> def test(string):
>     if string[:3] == 'yes:
>         return 1
>     else:
>         return 0

You can do the following:

Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = lambda x: x[:3] == 'yes'
>>> a('')
0
>>> a('yes')
1
>>> a('yess')
1
>>>

This works because an equality comparison expression already returns 0 or 1.
You can get creative (or silly, depending on how you look at it) by taking
that result and using it inside something larger:

>>> a = lambda x: ['does not start with "yes"', 'starts with "yes"'][x[:3]
== 'yes']
>>> a('')
'does not start with "yes"'
>>> a('yes')
'starts with "yes"'
>>> a('yess')
'starts with "yes"'
>>>

And of course, you get can get much sillier than this, but you get the idea.

-- josh





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