Tkinter lambda function

Question

(As the 'homework' tag indicates, this is part of a big project in Computer Science.)

I am writing a Jeopardy! simulation in Python with tkinter, and I'm having a big problem regarding the use of the lambda function in buttons. Assume root = Tk() and categories is a list.

# Variable to keep the buttons
root._buttons = {}

# Display headers on top of page
for i in range(5):
    # Get category name for display in main window
    name = categories[i]
    b = Label(root, text=fill(name.upper(), 10), width=18, height=3,\
        bg="darkblue", fg="white", font=("Helvetica bold", "", 11))
    b.grid(row=0, column=i)

    # Create list of buttons in that variable (root._buttons)
    btnlist = [None]*5

    # Display individual questions
    for j in range(5):

        # Make a button for the question
        b = Button(root, text="$" + str(200 * (j+1)), width=8, height=1,
            bg="darkblue", fg="orange", font=("Impact", "", 30))
        b.cat = name
        b.value = 200 * (j + 1)
        b.sel = lambda: select(b.cat, b.value)

        # Add callback event to button
        print(b.cat, b.value, b.sel)
        b.config(command=b.sel)

        # Add button to window
        b.grid(row=j+1, column=i)

        # Append to list
        btnlist[j] = b

    root._buttons[categories[i]] = btnlist

For all of the code, see my little Code Viewer (under construction!)

It's at lambda: select(b.cat, b.value) where the problem seems to occur, because when I click any button on the board, it always goes to the one last button on the board. I've tried other approaches, unfortunately all using lambda, and I have not seen any approach that does not involve lambda.

Answer 1

Change

lambda: select(b.cat, b.value)

to

lambda b = b: select(b.cat, b.value)

In your original code, b is not a local variable of the lambda; it is found in enclosing scope. Once the for-loop is completed, b retains it last value. That is why the lambda functions all use the last button.

If you define the lambda to take one argument with a default value, the default value is determined (and fixed) at the time the lambda is defined. Now b is a local variable of the lambda, and when the lambda is called with no arguments, Python sets b to the default value which happily is set to various different buttons as desired.