How come lambda expressions are objects in Java?

Question

How are lambda expressions objects in Java? How can lambda expressions, which are a part of functional programming, be implemented in Java, which is an object-oriented language? What Java concepts do I need to understand lambda expressions?

Answer 1

You need to understand few things:

1) Functional interface

• interface which has only one public method

public interface Runnable{
    void run();
}

• this is example of functional interface, it can have different kinds of methods such as int processNumber(int number)
• just remember there can be only one method (one not implemented method, defaults do not count)

2) Using functional interface

• you can implement your functional interface in your class let's say MyRunnable

public class MyRunnable implements Runnable{
    public void run(){
        System.out.println("Hello world");
    }
}

• than you can pass your MyRunnable class in another methods its just normal object

public class MyClass{
    public void myMethod(Runnable runnable){
        runnable.run();
    }
}

• this would print "Hello world"

public static void main{
    MyClass myClass = new MyClass();
    myClass.myMethod(new MyRunnable());
}

3) What lambda is doing

• so what lambda let you do is to create anonymous implementation of interface

public static void main{
    MyClass myClass = new MyClass();
    myClass.myMethod(() -> System.out.println("Hello my world"));
}

• this would print "Hello my world"
• you are just creating anonymous implementation of Runnable and passing it to MyMethod
• it is just syntactic sugar for this

public static void main{
    MyClass myClass = new MyClass();
    myClass.myMethod(new Runnable{
        public void run(){
            System.out.println("Hello my world");
        });
}

Answer 2

A lambda in Java is basically just a functional interface. It's mostly syntactic sugar.

Java is not a functional language and as such it cannot fully implement functional programming, only a subset of its core tenets. For example you can't implement proper typeclasses in Java.

In any case there's no standard definition for FP, the same as there's no standard definition for OOP. The specific definition can vary depending on the sources, but the overall ideas are (usually) the same.

Answer 3

Java is a Object Oriented Language. But some features from functional languages are also available in java like lambda

lambda is basically an object that acts like a function. documentation : https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/function/Function.html

as usual a function has an input and an output

inputs in functions : referred as T(as in take)

outputs in function : referred as R(as in return)

structure of declaration : Function<T,R> var_name = input_variables -> output_expression

example : Function<Double,Double> Sigmoid = x->(1/( 1 + Math.pow(Math.E,(-1*x))));

or there is another way(also known as method reference)

this is actually accessing the method under the hood

Function<T,R> var_name = class_name :: method_name

example : Function<Double,Double>Tanh = Math::tanh

Using a function

To use an function you just need to call the apply(T t) method of the function class

example : double num = sigmoid.apply(0)