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In Python, functions are first-class objects that can be created and passed around dynamically. Python's limited support for anonymous functions is the lambda construct. An example is the anonymous function which squares its input, called with the argument of 5:
Even when function arguments are passed using "call by value" semantics (which is always the case in Java, and is the case by default in C#), a value of a reference type is intrinsically a reference; so if a parameter belongs to a reference type, the resulting behavior bears some resemblance to "call by reference" semantics.
Methods on objects are functions attached to the object's class; the syntax instance. method (argument) is, for normal methods and functions, syntactic sugar for Class. method (instance, argument). Python methods have an explicit self parameter to access instance data , in contrast to the implicit self (or this ) in some other object-oriented ...
A closure-constructing operator creates a function object from a part of the program: the part of code given as an argument to the operator is part of the function, and so is the lexical environment: the bindings of the lexically visible variables are captured and stored in the function object, which is more commonly called a closure.
A higher-order function is a function that takes a function as an argument or returns one as a result. This is commonly used to customize the behavior of a generically defined function, often a looping construct or recursion scheme. Anonymous functions are a convenient way to specify such function arguments. The following examples are in Python 3.
Zip functions are often available in programming languages, often referred to as zip. In Lisp-dialects one can simply map the desired function over the desired lists, map is variadic in Lisp so it can take an arbitrary number of lists as argument. An example from Clojure: [1]
The standard type hierarchy of Python 3. In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a collection or grouping of data values, usually specified by a set of possible values, a set of allowed operations on these values, and/or a representation of these values as machine types. [1]
Parameters appear in procedure definitions; arguments appear in procedure calls. In the function definition f(x) = x*x the variable x is a parameter; in the function call f(2) the value 2 is the argument of the function. Loosely, a parameter is a type, and an argument is an instance.