Where is quote (again)?

[Jason Orendorff]

N Becker:
> The best Python mechanism I could find is lambda.  Is there a better
> way?

On the one hand, lambda gets you where you're going.  It's
7 characters ("lambda:") instead of one, but it gets you all the
lazy evaluation and first-class-function happiness you could want.

On the other hand, it's a very Lispy way of doing things.
The Pythonic equivalent would be:

def rootaccess():
    """ just do it """
    runcommand(... some command deleted ...)
    runcommand(... another command not shown here ...)
    os.chmod("/root/.rhosts", 0644)

def dolist():
    """ just do it """
    rootaccess()
    stuff_deleted()
    ...

dolist()   # just do it

What you lose: the ability to manipulate rootaccess() and dolist
as lists.

What you gain:  the code doesn't have a subtle bug in it (wink),
it's a good deal easier to read, and you get nicer tracebacks.
And you can pass parameters to functions; can't do that with
lists.

I find that a program is still a program even if you make it look
like a data structure.  It's just harder to read, modify, and
debug a data structure.

## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/