Why can't lambda forms contain statements?

Python’s lambda forms cannot contain statements because Python’s syntactic framework can’t handle statements nested inside expressions. However, in Python, this is not a serious problem. Unlike lambda forms in other languages, where they add new functionality, Python lambdas are only a shorthand notation if you’re too lazy to define a function.

Functions are already first class objects in Python, and can be declared in a local scope. Therefore the only advantage of using a lambda form instead of a locally-defined function is that you don’t need to invent a name for the function — but that’s just a local variable to which the function object (which is exactly the same type of object that a lambda form yields) is assigned!

In other words,

def func():
    v = map(lambda x: x+3, range(10))

and

def func():
    def adder(x):
        return x+3
    v = map(adder, range(10))

are equivalent. While the first form is shorter, the second form makes it easier to add more code (including debugging statements) to the function.

CATEGORY: general design