[thayne]

That's true, but python isn't really functional in the "like lisp" way either. Things like ifs, loops, etc. are statements, not expressions. Lambdas are pretty limited (they can only be one line). There is no tail recursion.

Functions are first-class objects, and it supports higher-order functions, and had closure (even if in any non-trivial case you needed a full nested def) which were less common features when Python was first introduced, and probably why python was labeled as "functional." But now those are standard features in almost every modern language, so using that as a criteria for "functional" languages is not a very useful distinction.

[gilch]

No, Python's lambdas can have as many lines of code as you please. They are not limited to one line.

I'm not sure where this myth comes from, but I see it a lot. Maybe some people think that "lines of code" == "statements", but these are not remotely the same thing, even if they happen to coincide in simple cases.

Python's lambdas are limited to one expression in the implied return statement, but not allowing multiple statements in lambdas is no real limitation when programming in the functional style, as the true functional languages have no statements to speak of, only expressions, and their lambdas work exactly the same way Python's does. A single expression is all that a functional programming language's lambda needs.

Multiline lambdas are considered poor style in Python ("Why not use a `def`?" they'd say.), so you may not see them much, but they do work. The Hissp compiler, for example, relies on this feature. (I am the author of Hissp BTW.)