Multiline lambdas

Although Python has anonymous lambda functions, they lack the flexibility that some languages such as Javascript or even modern C++ have. In Python, lambda functions are limited to a single statement, which is often interpreted as meaning that it can only do one thing. This is not strictly true, however, since constructing a tuple is considered a single statement. In other words, we can cheat a little and call two independent functions in one lambda like this:

(lambda: (foo(), bar()))()

This is still somewhat constraining since variables cannot be defined within the lambda expression, so cases where this trick is useful are limited. One instance where this is particularly nice though is when defining callbacks for a GUI. Typically when a user clicks on a button, there might be several actions that should be triggered, such as starting an experiment, updating a GUI label, etc. Below is a simple example to illustrate this method:

import sys
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import *
from PyQt5.QtGui import *


class MainWindow(QWidget):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        self.setWindowTitle('Multiline lambdas')

        self.label = QLabel("Click the button")

        self.button = QPushButton("Click me!")
        self.button.clicked.connect(lambda: (
            self.button.setEnabled(False),
            self.button.setText("You clicked me!"),
            self.label.setText("Woo!")
        ))

        layout = QVBoxLayout()
        layout.addWidget(self.label)
        layout.addWidget(self.button)
        self.setLayout(layout)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    win = MainWindow()
    win.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())