Something is rotten in Denmark...

[Terry Reedy]

On 5/31/2011 8:09 PM, harrismh777 wrote:

> At the moment I'm only speaking about my OP and that particular list
> comprehension... the thing that happened (at least for me) is that the
> intuitive sense that each 'i' somehow becomes a part of the anonymous
> function (I know, not so) is built-in. There is little to nothing
> indicating in the docs that this is not so

On the contrary, the docs very explicitly say that a lambda expression 
is equivalent to a def statement.

"[Lambda forms (lambda expressions)] are a shorthand to create anonymous 
functions; the expression lambda arguments: expression yields a function 
object. The unnamed object behaves like a function object defined with

def <lambda>(arguments):
     return expression"

? Again, what we have here is
> the 'i' being saved in a cell and looked up at call time (an
> implementation detail, 'late-binding') that is critical for the
> user-coder to understand.

Again, exactly the same as if the function were created with a def 
statement.

> I'm not commenting on that, but it seems to me that if lambda is going
> to remain in the language at all that 'early-binding' in the lambda
> specific case would make sense; at least make the lambda more useful
> generally.

I disagree. Currently, late-binding is the default, with early-binding 
an option through a few different mechanisms. Making early binding the 
default would *reduce* the usefulness by eliminating the late-binding 
option and would add nothing that cannot be done now.

There are some people whose 'intuition' is the opposite of yours. They 
instead want to eliminate the early-binding option of default argument 
expressions. They want to reduce flexibility in the other direction. 
Both proposals are equally bad.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy