Is it possible to have multiple statements in a python lambda expression?

Question

I am a python newbie trying to achieve the following:

I have a list of lists:

lst = [[567,345,234],[253,465,756, 2345],[333,777,111, 555]]


        

Answer 1

Putting the expressions in a list may simulate multiple expressions:

E.g.:

lambda x: [f1(x), f2(x), f3(x), x+1]

This will not work with statements.

Answer 2

Yes it is possible. Try below code snippet.

x = [('human', 1), ('i', 2), ('am', 1), ('.', 1), ('love', 1), ('python', 3), ('', 1),
  ('run', 1), ('is', 2), ('robust', 1), ('hello', 1), ('spark', 2), ('to', 1), ('analysis', 2), ('on', 1), ('big', 1), ('data', 1), ('with', 1), ('analysis', 1), ('great', 1)
]

rdd_filter = rdd1_word_cnt_sum.filter(lambda x: 'python' in x or 'human' in x or 'big' in x)
rdd_filter.collect()

Answer 3

Time traveler here. If you generally want to have multiple statements within a lambda, you can pass other lambdas as arguments to that lambda.

(lambda x, f: list((y[1] for y in f(x))))(lst, lambda x: (sorted(y) for y in x))

You can't actually have multiple statements, but you can simulate that by passing lambdas to lambdas.

Edit: The time traveler returns! You can also abuse the behavior of boolean expressions (keeping in mind short-circuiting rules and truthiness) to chain operations. Using the ternary operator gives you even more power. Again, you can't have multiple statements, but you can of course have many function calls. This example does some arbitrary junk with a bunch of data, but, it shows that you can do some funny stuff. The print statements are examples of functions which return None (as does the .sort() method) but they also help show what the lambda is doing.

>>> (lambda x: print(x) or x+1)(10)
10
11
>>> f = (lambda x: x[::2] if print(x) or x.sort() else print(enumerate(x[::-1]) if print(x) else filter(lambda (i, y): print((i, y)) or (i % 3 and y % 2), enumerate(x[::-1]))))
>>> from random import shuffle
>>> l = list(range(100))
>>> shuffle(l)
>>> f(l)
[84, 58, 7, 99, 17, 14, 60, 35, 12, 56, 26, 48, 55, 40, 28, 52, 31, 39, 43, 96, 64, 63, 54, 37, 79, 25, 46, 72, 10, 59, 24, 68, 23, 13, 34, 41, 94, 29, 62, 2, 50, 32, 11, 97, 98, 3, 70, 93, 1, 36, 87, 47, 20, 73, 45, 0, 65, 57, 6, 76, 16, 85, 95, 61, 4, 77, 21, 81, 82, 30, 53, 51, 42, 67, 74, 8, 15, 83, 5, 9, 78, 66, 44, 27, 19, 91, 90, 18, 49, 86, 22, 75, 71, 88, 92, 33, 89, 69, 80, 38]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]
(0, 99)
(1, 98)
(2, 97)
(3, 96)
(4, 95)
(5, 94)
(6, 93)
(7, 92)
(8, 91)
(9, 90)
(10, 89)
(11, 88)
(12, 87)
(13, 86)
(14, 85)
(15, 84)
(16, 83)
(17, 82)
(18, 81)
(19, 80)
(20, 79)
(21, 78)
(22, 77)
(23, 76)
(24, 75)
(25, 74)
(26, 73)
(27, 72)
(28, 71)
(29, 70)
(30, 69)
(31, 68)
(32, 67)
(33, 66)
(34, 65)
(35, 64)
(36, 63)
(37, 62)
(38, 61)
(39, 60)
(40, 59)
(41, 58)
(42, 57)
(43, 56)
(44, 55)
(45, 54)
(46, 53)
(47, 52)
(48, 51)
(49, 50)
(50, 49)
(51, 48)
(52, 47)
(53, 46)
(54, 45)
(55, 44)
(56, 43)
(57, 42)
(58, 41)
(59, 40)
(60, 39)
(61, 38)
(62, 37)
(63, 36)
(64, 35)
(65, 34)
(66, 33)
(67, 32)
(68, 31)
(69, 30)
(70, 29)
(71, 28)
(72, 27)
(73, 26)
(74, 25)
(75, 24)
(76, 23)
(77, 22)
(78, 21)
(79, 20)
(80, 19)
(81, 18)
(82, 17)
(83, 16)
(84, 15)
(85, 14)
(86, 13)
(87, 12)
(88, 11)
(89, 10)
(90, 9)
(91, 8)
(92, 7)
(93, 6)
(94, 5)
(95, 4)
(96, 3)
(97, 2)
(98, 1)
(99, 0)
[(2, 97), (4, 95), (8, 91), (10, 89), (14, 85), (16, 83), (20, 79), (22, 77), (26, 73), (28, 71), (32, 67), (34, 65), (38, 61), (40, 59), (44, 55), (46, 53), (50, 49), (52, 47), (56, 43), (58, 41), (62, 37), (64, 35), (68, 31), (70, 29), (74, 25), (76, 23), (80, 19), (82, 17), (86, 13), (88, 11), (92, 7), (94, 5), (98, 1)]

Answer 4

After analyzing all solutions offered above I came up with this combination, which seem most clear ad useful for me:

func = lambda *args, **kwargs: "return value" if [
    print("function 1..."),
    print("function n"),
    ["for loop" for x in range(10)]
] else None

Isn't it beautiful? Remember that there have to be something in list, so it has True value. And another thing is that list can be replaced with set, to look more like C style code, but in this case you cannot place lists inside as they are not hashabe

Answer 5

Using begin() from here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hms4z/ask_pyreddit_if_you_were_making_your_own/c1wycci

Python 3.2 (r32:88445, Mar 25 2011, 19:28:28) 
[GCC 4.5.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> lst = [[567,345,234],[253,465,756, 2345],[333,777,111, 555]]
>>> begin = lambda *args: args[-1]
>>> list(map(lambda x: begin(x.sort(), x[1]), lst))
[345, 465, 333]

Answer 6

There are better solutions without using lambda function. But if we really want to use lambda function, here is a generic solution to deal with multiple statements: map(lambda x: x[1] if (x.sort()) else x[1],lst)

You don't really care what the statement returns.