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The names "lambda abstraction", "lambda function", and "lambda expression" refer to the notation of function abstraction in lambda calculus, where the usual function f (x) = M would be written (λx. M), and where M is an expression that uses x. Compare to the Python syntax of lambda x: M.
Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. [33] Python is dynamically type-checked and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional ...
Python reached version 1.0 in January 1994. The major new features included in this release were the functional programming tools lambda, map, filter and reduce.Van Rossum stated that "Python acquired lambda, reduce(), filter() and map(), courtesy of a Lisp hacker who missed them and submitted working patches".
Map functions can be and often are defined in terms of a fold such as foldr, which means one can do a map-fold fusion: foldr f z . map g is equivalent to foldr (f . g) z. The implementation of map above on singly linked lists is not tail-recursive, so it may build up a lot of frames on the stack when called with a large list. Many languages ...
The lambda calculus, developed in the 1930s by Alonzo Church, is a formal system of computation built from function application. In 1937 Alan Turing proved that the lambda calculus and Turing machines are equivalent models of computation, [37] showing that the lambda calculus is Turing complete. Lambda calculus forms the basis of all functional ...
Python sets are very much like mathematical sets, and support operations like set intersection and union. Python also features a frozenset class for immutable sets, see Collection types. Dictionaries (class dict) are mutable mappings tying keys and corresponding values. Python has special syntax to create dictionaries ({key: value})
In this case particular lambda terms (which define functions) are considered as values. "Running" (beta reducing) the fixed-point combinator on the encoding gives a lambda term for the result which may then be interpreted as fixed-point value. Alternately, a function may be considered as a lambda term defined purely in lambda calculus.
Anonymous recursion is primarily of use in allowing recursion for anonymous functions, particularly when they form closures or are used as callbacks, to avoid having to bind the name of the function.