Using an imported function inside lambda - Python

Question

I am trying to create a timedelta dictionary based on different parameters. For eg.

from django.utils import timezone
a = {'Minutes':(lambda dt,delta: dt + timezone.timedelta(minutes=delta)),
     'Hours': (lambda dt,delta: dt + timezone.timedelta(hours=delta)}

Now while using the above dictionary:

new_time = a['Minutes'](timezone.now(),10)

It gives following error:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/commands/shell.pyc in <lambda>(dt, delta)
----> 1 a = {'Minutes':(lambda dt,delta: dt + timezone.timedelta(minutes=delta))}
NameError: global name 'timezone' is not defined

Please explain why I cannot use the imported function inside lambda.

Answer 1

Reference here: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/18204

(fixed in Django 1.6)

see also:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19004592/202168
https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/2532/

I posted this here because I quite often run into this issue (and the couple of comments seemed to be shell-related), although the OP has not stated they are in the Django shell at all so this answer could be irrelevant.