Question

Can someone explain anonymous functions?

Answer 1

I don't intend this to sound snippy, but an anonymous function is a function that has no name. Here's a normal function to multiply its parameter by two:

def MulByTwo(x):
return x * 2

But Python, like some other languages, lets you define such a function for use without having to create a name for it, and avoid cluttering the namespace with names that you don't really need. In such a case, you create the same function with "lambda x: x * 2".

So why would you want to do that? In so-called functional programming, you often want to pass a function as a parameter to another function. This lets you do that without creating a name that will never be used explicitly.

Answer 2

thanks, so in passing a function as a parameter, i'm not passing the result, but simply a function/process to manipulate data/variables in another function?

Answer 3

That's the general idea. I don't use it much; for a complete explanation, see http://docs.python.org/howto/functional.html.

Answer 4

Thanks