Playing with exceptions inside lambda expressions in Python

The following piece of code can certainly claim being the most insane Python expression ever written:

C = lambda f : ( lambda * args : ( lambda o : ( lambda g : { None } | { None for _ in iter ( lambda : ( lambda G : ( not G ) or o . append ( G . pop ())) ( list (( lambda : ( yield from ( g ( * o . pop ()) for _ in ( None ,))))())), None ) } and o . pop ())( f ( lambda * a : o . append ( a ) or next ( iter (())))))([ args ]))

The two most notable hidden features of this expressions are a true infinite loop and a rudimentary try/except/raise system.

Since the PEP 463 was rejected, there is no general way of catching an exception in an expression (raising any exception is very easy on the other hand). I fall upon a question about it and answered it by explaining all my ideas about what could actually be achieved.

Then I decided to implement a trampoline-based system allowing user-defined functions to jump back to the initial continuation by using the very single exception I finally managed to fully handle in an expression, which is StopIteration .

Implementing an infinite loop is very easy:

{ None for _ in iter ( f , None ) }

with a relevant f function will run as long as expected without needing any memory since the size of the set will not increase during the computation.

Raising the StopIteration exception can be achieved either with a general solution or with a ad hoc expression:

( _ for _ in ()) . throw ( StopIteration ) next ( iter (()))

Catching the exception can be achieved by computing everything inside an iterator intended to run over a single value: once converted to a list, the sequence will either be empty or contain one returned value. The following piece of code randomly returns [] or [1] (if an exception is raised or not):

from random import randrange list (( lambda :( yield from ( randrange ( 0 , 2 ) or next ( iter (())) for _ in ( None ,))))())

Here is a tail-recursive version of the factorial using the C expression defined above:

myfac = C ( lambda f : lambda n , acc : f ( n - 1 , n * acc ) if n else acc ) print ( "Factorial of 0 is" , myfac ( 0 , 1 )) print ( "Factorial of 1 is" , myfac ( 1 , 1 )) print ( "Factorial of 5 is" , myfac ( 5 , 1 )) print ( "Factorial of 6 is" , myfac ( 6 , 1 ))

Here is another function showing how the callback function allows to escape an infinite loop: the call to g(1) obviously makes the evaluation entering the inner loop, but the DEBUG word is actually not printed because evaluating f(0) makes the evaluation return back to the initial continuation:

def outer ( f ): def inner ( n ): if n == 0 : return 42 while True : print ( "DEBUG" , f ( 0 )) return inner g = C ( outer ) print ( g ( 1 ))