What Is Lambda In Python

In this article, we will learn about the lambda function in python.

A lambda function in Python is a brief, anonymous function that is declared by the keyword. It only has room for one expression, but it can accept any number of arguments.

Higher-order functions like reduce(), map(), filter(), and lambda are frequently employed with lambda functions as an argument (). They can also be used to write quick, disposable functions that are only called once in your code.

One of the main advantages of lambda functions is their conciseness. They can be defined in a single line of code, making them more readable and less verbose than traditional functions defined using the def keyword.

Additionally, they don’t have a name, so they don’t pollute the namespace like named functions.

lambda function uses:

1. In event-driven programming: Lambda functions can be used as event handlers in event-driven programming. They are executed when a specific event occurs, such as a button click or a mouse hover.
2. In functional programming: Lambda functions are used extensively in functional programming. They are used to define small, reusable functions that are passed as arguments to other functions.
3. In Data Science: Lambda functions can be used in data science to apply some operation on the data, for example, to impute missing values or to clean and process the data.
4. In parallel programming: Lambda functions can be used in parallel programming to specify the function that will be executed in parallel.

Here is a straightforward lambda function illustration that takes two inputs and outputs their sum:

add = lambda x, y: x + y
print(add(1, 2)) # 3

In this example, the lambda function takes two arguments x and y and returns their sum. The function is assigned to a variable ‘add’ so that it can be reused later.

Another advantage of lambda functions is that they are useful in situations where a function is only used once or where a function is used in a single place. For example, the following code sorts a list of strings by their length using a lambda function as the key:

words = ['code', 'hubs', 'the'] 
sorted_words = sorted(words, key=lambda word: len(word)) 
print(sorted_words) # ['the', 'code', 'hubs']