Creating a variable as a function

[buran]

The suggestion with lambda goes against PEP8 recommendations:

Always use a def statement instead of an assignment statement that binds a lambda expression directly to an identifier:

# Correct:
def f(x):
    return 2*x

# Wrong:
f = lambda x: 2*x

the first form means that the name of the resulting function object is specifically 'f' instead of the generic '<lambda>'. This is more useful for tracebacks and string representations in general. The use of the assignment statement eliminates the sole benefit a lambda expression can offer over an explicit def statement (i.e. that it can be embedded inside a larger expression)

as to OP question - function is object as any other, you can always assign the function to variable:

def spam():
    print('This is spam')
eggs = spam
eggs()

This has plenty of useful applications, e.g. the pythonic way to create a menu/switch statement, using dict with functions as values.


also, you may be interested in functools.partial

from functools import partial
def raise_power(num, power):
    return num ** power

power_3 = partial(raise_power, power=3)
print(power_3(2))