Python - Lambda Function

Python - Lambda Function

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In Python, lambda function is called termed as anonymous function and it is a function without a name. An anonymous function is not declared by def keyword, rather it is declared by using lambda keyword.

Create lambda Function

Lambda function is defined using lambda keyword along with parameter(s) name followed by a single statement. Please not that a lambda function can have many parameters but only one statement.

Syntax


#Defining lambda
lambda parameters: statement

Example:


Example

x = lambda a, b : a * b
print(x(3, 4))

Output

12

Use of Lambda function

Lambda function can be used anonymously inside another function, gives the flexibility of using the same function for different scenarios. In the below example, lambda function is used to convert user-defined 'area' function to calculate area of circle, square and rectangle.

Example:


Example

def area(n):
  return lambda a, b=1 : n * a * (b if b != 1 else a)

circle_area = area(22/7)
square_area = area(1)
rectangle_area = area(1)

print(circle_area(2))
print(square_area(2))
print(rectangle_area(2, 3))

Output

12.57

4

6

Lambda function with built-in function

There are several built-in function in Python which requires function as argument. Instead of creating a function, lambda function can be used in such cases effectively provided it must have single statement. Few of such built-in functions are map, reduce and filter etc.

Example: lambda function with map function


Example

MyList = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
#Creating a map function using lambda function
#which returns square of each element
NewList = list(map(lambda i: i*i, MyList))

print(NewList)

Output

[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

Example: lambda function with filter function


Example

#Removing all elements from range(1,21)
#which are multiples of 2 or 3
NewList = list(filter(lambda i: (i%2!=0) and (i%3!=0), range(1,21)))

print(NewList)

Output

[1, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19]

Example: lambda function with reduce function

for reduce function to work, it must be imported from functools module.

Example

#lambda function is used to find out max element of a set
from functools import reduce
MySet = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60} 
max_num = reduce(lambda a, b: a if a > b else b, MySet)

print(max_num)

Output

60
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