Special keyword argument lambda syntax

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Beni Cherniavsky <beni.cherniavsky at gmail.com> wrote:
>  This proposal outrageously suggests a special syntax for in-line
>  functions passed as keyword arguments::
> 
>      >>> sorted(range(9), key(n)=n%3)
>      [0, 3, 6, 1, 4, 7, 2, 5, 8]
> 
>  The claim is that such specialization hits a syntax sweet spot, and
>  that this use case is frequent enough to contemplate eventually making
>  it the only in-line function syntax.

-1 from me.

I think that lambda / inline functions should be discouraged as it
moves python away from, "there should be one-- and preferably only one
--obvious way to do it."  IMHO Guido was right in his original impulse
to kill this second class way of making functions...

I would write the above as

    def compute_key(n):
        "Compute the sort key so that x, y and z are true"
        return n % 3
    sorted(range(9), key=compute_key)

Which I think is clearer and more obvious.  It gives you the
opportunity for a docstring also.

Yes it is a bit more typing, but who wants to play "code golf" all
day?

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick