Lecture 15

Functions as values & lambda

MCS 260 Fall 2020
Emily Dumas

Reminders

Live coding

A unary calculator REPL

• Design document - 10am lecture
• Code - 10am lecture
• Design document - 2pm lecture
• Code - 2pm lecture

Live coding

A unary calculator REPL

Recap

• Functions are values in Python, just like float, int, etc.
• Functions can be assigned to variables, used as parameters, stored in lists, used as keys or values
• Dictionary mapping string to function can be used for handlers
• sys.exit() exits program immediately
• lambda vars: retval defines an anonymous function
• Don't use lambda for complicated functions
• Assigning to a return value is a good way to handle functions that need to change vars outside of their scope