<p><pre><code>    Python lambdas are limited to one line and can’t contain
    statements (for, if, def, etc.). Which leaves me
    wondering, what’s the point?
</code></pre>
As much as I wish that the python lambda syntax was more powerful, they are ridiculously useful for one-liners where you can't use forms that require whitespace indentation. Everything must consist of set operations.<p><pre><code>    cat file | python -c "import sys; lines=sys.stdin.readlines(); lines_i_care_about = [str(l.split(',')[2]) for l in lines if l.split(',')&#62;=3]; print '\n'.join( lines_i_care_about )
</code></pre>
(yes you could do this example in awk or sed, but that's not the point)