[ThePhysicist]

Recently I wrote a parser generator, which would take a rule structure and return a function that does the parsing. Lambdas were very useful here, and I do not know how I would've implemented this without them, at least in an efficient manner, because they let me do something like this:

    Parser ParserGenerator::compileLiteral(Rule& rule){

        const string literal = rule.value;

        Parser parser = [literal] (shared_ptr<State> state){
           //parse the literal...
           state.Advance(literal.size())
           return state;
       }

       return parser
    }

Solving this without lambdas would require a different encapsulation mechanism for the rule data, such as a class, which (IMHO) would make the code less idiomatic.

So lambdas are actually very useful!

[nly]

Well, an alternative approach might to not to couple parsing and state manipulation :)

PEGTL does this. Approximately, you have a template parameter MyAction<> on the Parser<> template which in turn calls "MyAction<Rule>::apply (state)" when parsing of each rule is complete.

It's a fantastic library. I highly recommend giving it a whirl.

[0] https://github.com/ColinH/PEGTL/blob/master/doc/Actions-and-...