Draft Pep (was: Re: Let's Talk About Lambda Functions!)

[François Pinard]

[John Roth]

> Rationale

>     There is a continuous interest in generalizing the lambda() function,
>     which has significant limitations.  Most of the proposals to date
>     have attempted to invent additional syntax to allow fewer restrictions
>     while still maintaining the expression format of lambda().

The rumour states that Guido regrets having added `lambda' to Python.
I guess it goes beyond the mere `lambda' keyword: it is reasonable to
think that what Guido regrets is the addition of anonymous functions.

If the rationale is essentially reduced to the vague statement of a
"continuous interest", it is a pretty weak rationale.  Before anything
else, the rationale should stress, in very convincing ways, why anonymous
functions should grow stronger in Python, instead of being faded out.

Also, recent additions in Python are said to significantly alleviate most
of the need for anonymous functions, so the rationale of this PEP might
explain why these additions are still not satisfactory on that respect.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard