selforganising/book — pull request #26 by maryams (2014-10-05 22:19:01+00:00)
Title: Create Closure.md

# Closure

Closures are functions that refer to independent (free) variables.
In other words, the function defined in the closure 'remembers' the environment in which it was created.

Consider the following:

function init() {
var name = "Mozilla"; // name is a local variable created by init
function displayName() { // displayName() is the inner function, a closure
alert (name); // displayName() uses variable declared in the parent function
}
displayName();
}
init();

init() creates a local variable name and then a function called displayName(). displayName() is an inner function that is defined inside init() and is only available within the body of that function. displayName() has no local variables of its own, however it has access to the variables of outer functions and so can use the variable name declared in the parent function.

This is an example of lexical scoping: in JavaScript, the scope of a variable is defined by its location within the source code (it is apparent lexically) and nested functions have access to variables declared in their outer scope.

#### Now consider the following example:

function makeFunc() {
var name = "Mozilla";
function displayName() {
alert(name);
}
return displayName;
}

var myFunc = makeFunc();
myFunc();
If you run this code it will have exactly the same effect as the previous init() example: the string "Mozilla" will be displayed in a JavaScript alert box. What's different — and interesting — is that the displayName() inner function was returned from the outer function before being executed.

That the code still works may seem unintuitive. Normally, the local variables within a function only exist for the duration of that function's execution. Once makeFunc() has finished executing, it is reasonable to expect that the name variable will no longer be accessible. Since the code still works as expected, this is obviously not the case.

The solution to this puzzle is that myFunc has become a closure. A closure is a special kind of object that combines two things: a function, and the environment in which that function was created. The environment consists of any local variables that were in-scope at the time that the closure was created. In this case, myFunc is a closure that incorporates both the displayName function and the "Mozilla" string that existed when the closure was created.

#### Here's a slightly more interesting example — a makeAdder function:

function makeAdder(x) {
return function(y) {
return x + y;
};
}

var add5 = makeAdder(5);
var add10 = makeAdder(10);

console.log(add5(2)); // 7
console.log(add10(2)); // 12

In this example, we have defined a function makeAdder(x) which takes a single argument x and returns a new function. The function it returns takes a single argument y, and returns the sum of x and y.

In essence, makeAdder is a function factory — it creates functions which can add a specific value to their argument. In the above example we use our function factory to create two new functions — one that adds 5 to its argument, and one that adds 10.

add5 and add10 are both closures. They share the same function body definition, but store different environments. In add5's environment, x is 5. As far as add10 is concerned, x is 10.