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Python's is operator may be used to compare object identities (comparison by reference), and comparisons may be chained—for example, a <= b <= c. Python uses and, or, and not as Boolean operators. Python has a type of expression named a list comprehension, and a more general expression named a generator expression. [78]
In Python, functions are first-class objects that can be created and passed around dynamically. Python's limited support for anonymous functions is the lambda construct. An example is the anonymous function which squares its input, called with the argument of 5:
Chains of three or more functions are possible; for example, function 1 calls function 2, function 2 calls function 3, and function 3 calls function 1 again. Indirect recursion is also called mutual recursion , which is a more symmetric term, though this is simply a difference of emphasis, not a different notion.
These examples reduce easily to a single recursive function by inlining the forest function in the tree function, which is commonly done in practice: directly recursive functions that operate on trees sequentially process the value of the node and recurse on the children within one function, rather than dividing these into two separate functions.
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
In a dynamically typed language, where type can only be determined at runtime, many type errors can only be detected at runtime. For example, the Python code a + b is syntactically valid at the phrase level, but the correctness of the types of a and b can only be determined at runtime, as variables do not have types in Python, only values do.
Similarly an array element update is a procedure consisting of three arguments, for example set_array(Array, vector(i,j), value), but many languages also provide syntax such as Array[i,j] = value. A construct in a language is syntactic sugar if it can be removed from the language without any effect on what the language can do: functionality and ...
Similarly, the idea of immutable data from functional programming is often included in imperative programming languages, [108] for example the tuple in Python, which is an immutable array, and Object.freeze() in JavaScript. [109]