Re: better lambda support in the future?

[Steven Bethard]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
Steven Bethard wrote:

Even if you could settle the syntax issue, once you've decided that you really do need a true 
block in an anonymous function, you're not really saving much space by not declaring it:

def f(*args):
   # body line 1
   # body line 2
   # ...
   # body line N
x = func or f
v.s.
x = func or lambda *args:
               # body line 1
               # body line 2
               # ...
               # body line N

you meant:
    def x(*args):
        # body line 1
        # body line 2
        # ...
        # body line N
    v.s.
    x = func or lambda *args:
        # body line 1
        # body line 2
        # ...
        # body line N
right?
You're welcome to name the function whatever you want -- notice in my 
example that the function is used in the statement:

x = func or f
If you'd prefer the statement to read:
x = func or x
that's also fine.  Depends on what exactly 'x' is, and whether or not it 
really makes sense for the function I called 'f' to have the same name 
as the variable called 'x'.  It certainly may, but since I wasn't giving 
real code, I didn't want to commit to that.

Perhaps a better example would have been something along the lines of:
dict(a=lambda *args:
           # body 1
     ,
     b=lambda *args:
           # body 2
     ,
     c=lambda *args:
           # body 3
)[s](values)
v.s.
def a_func(*args):
    # body 1
def b_func(*args):
    # body 2
def c_func(*args):
    # body 3
dict(a=a_func, b=b_func, c=c_func)[s](values)
where it's clear that I'm trying to use lambdas where expressions are 
required.

I assume that the point you were trying to make is that:
def f(*args):
    return expr
is equivalent to
f = lambda *args: expr
?
Steve
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