Question

What ‘kind of thing’ will I get if I do this?

(car (list lambda lambda))

I thought I’d get lambda back, which means I could do

(define my_lambda (car (list lambda lambda)))
(define foo (my_lambda (n) (+ n n)))

But that didn’t work!
Thanks,

Answer 1

lambda is a special form (meaning: standard evaluation rules don’t apply to it), part of the core primitives of the language and is not a symbol or other kind of value that can be assigned to a variable.

Answering your question, the “kind of thing” that you’ll get after evaluating the expression (list lambda) will depend on the Scheme interpreter that you’re using, but more often than not you’ll get an error. For instance, DrRacket complains like this:

lambda: bad syntax in: lambda