Abe,

Here's some information regarding closures in Python (the wiki page  
goes into the limitation of lambda calc in python. Hope it helps.  
Maybe the rest of you CSSA'ers will find it somewhat interesting.


1) From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_syntax_and_semantics

First-class functions

In Python, functions are first-class objects that can be created and  
passed around dynamically.

Python's limited support for anonymous functions is the lambda  
construct. Since the availability of full anonymous functions is  
non-existent then named functions is the primary use of functions in  
Python. Lambdas are limited to containing expressions rather than  
statements, although control flow can still be implemented less  
elegantly within lambda by using short-circuiting.[1]

Closures --
Python has had support for lexical closures since version 2.2.

Also see:
2) http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/charming_python_13.html

3) http://www.secnetix.de/olli/Python/lambda_functions.hawk

Sincerely,
- Michael E. Karpeles

-- 
UVM ACM Chapter
CSSA Vice President
CSSA Secretary
www.uvm.edu/~mkarpele