Anonymous functions - the lambda keyword
The keyword lambda is used in Python to define anonymous functions, that is; functions without a name and described by a single expression. You might just want to perform an operation on a function that can be expressed by a simple expression without naming this function and without defining this function by a lengthy def
block.
Note
The name lambda originates from a special branch of calculus and mathematical logic, the -calculus.
For instance, to compute the following expression, we may use SciPy’s function quad
, which requires the function to be integrated as its first argument and the integration bounds as the next two arguments:
Here, the function to integrate is just a simple one-liner and we use the lambda
keyword to define it:
import scipy.integrate as si si.quad(lambda x: x ** 2 + 5, 0, 1)
The syntax is as follows:
lambda parameter_list: expression
The definition of the lambda
function can only consist of a single expression and in particular...