On May 10, 8:18 pm, a...@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote: > saying that functional features > are "tacked on" understates the case. Consider how frequently people > reach for list comps and gen exps. Function dispatch through dicts is > the standard replacement for a switch statement. Lambda callbacks are > common. Etc, etc, etc
Just to play devil's advocate, I will notice that list comps and gen exps are not really functional (a generator has a state that changes at each call of next). A functional language would use streams instead. Function dispatch through dicts is very lame compared to pattern matching. Lambdas are restricted. There is no tail call optimization. Definitively Python functional features are "tacked on" with respect to a language defined to be functional. Having said that, the functional features are still usable and one can use a functional style in Python if she wants to (module a few caveats). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
