When is a lambda function advantageous over a normal function?

Question

Ok so maybe my question seems ridiculous, however I cannot seem to find any real advantage to using a lambda function. In fact the only thing different I have encountered with lambda is that it makes a code less readable, which slows the debug process. Is there some obvious purpose for this or situation where this becomes essential?

Answer 1

I once did a challenge on codewars or some other ( not sure now) where I had a character limmit in defining a function. The lambda turned out to be shorter.

def fun(x):
return something x here
vs
fun=lambda x: something x here

the bigest value is most probably using it inside something such as map or filter.

Answer 2

Anthany Martin
Have look at the next handy function. It returns the index of the item in list x that is the closest to value n

min(range(len(x)), key=lambda i: abs(x[i]-n))

Answer 3

Louis , thank you for your answer! I have a follow up however, how is using lambda in map() for example different than a defined generator function? Or maybe I don't quite understand how map() works, that is entirely possible lol