[quantumtremor]

So why not accept a lambda? I saw that http://stackoverflow.com/questions/334851/print-the-code-whi... gives you the source, though I'm not sure if it'll always work. This does work though:

  ~ λ echo "a = lambda x: x * 2" > test.py
  ~ λ py -i test.py               
  IPython 4.2.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
  In [1]: a(2)
  Out[1]: 4
  In [2]: import inspect
  In [3]: inspect.getsource(a)
  Out[3]: 'a = lambda x: x * 2\n'

I'm definitely a big fan of using Lisp's quoting for code-as-data, but I feel stringifying it makes the problem even worse.

[chubot]

Yeah that's a good point. I haven't used this ggplot library, but it seems like it could use lambdas. And then you don't break syntax highlighting.

One other place I've seen this done is in the numexpr for Python.

https://github.com/pydata/numexpr

It does seem like this

    ne.evaluate('a*b-4.1*a > 2.5*b') 

could be

    ne.evaluate(lambda a, b: a*b - 4.1*a > 2.5*b)

The lambda is never executed because it compiles to machine code and not Python byte code, but that shouldn't make a difference. You should still be able to use the AST of the body as input to the compiler.

And then a and b have to be pulled out of locals() automatically or something.