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Discussion on: Explain Javascript Closures

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Replies for: Closure is a technique for implementing lexically scoped name binding in a language with first-class functions. Without closure code like this (o...

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tiffany profile image
tiff •

See this is a really complicated explanation. I have had this same question, and this answer doesn't satisfy me at all. I still don't quite grok this. Can you give a simpler answer, like I'm five?

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imthedeveloper profile image
ImTheDeveloper •

Agree definitely would love to see real world examples from someone's code where they can justify the usage of the closure and their thinking behind why they decided to go that route.

I see a lot of "good practices" usually when this topic comes up and also "check out some public repos" but definitely helps to be able to talk a real example through 👍

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stereobooster profile image
stereobooster • • Edited

From implementation point of view every function in JS is a closure (probably modern JS engines can do some tricks to "flatten out" them). Based on this to ask why we need closures is like to ask why we need functions. Probably this is not what you meant...

There are functions which could work with closure or without (from implementation point of view), for example

var counter = 0
function increase() {
  return counter++;
}
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You can implement this function in C (which doesn't have closures). Other functions can't work without closures, for example

function a(x) {
  return function () {
    return x
  }
}
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Function which returns function needs to use closures - it's not a choice. It's like bird uses wings to fly not by choice - it's the only way.

Based on this I guess you asked: what is the use case for functions that return other functions.

Answer: functional programing techniques. Whole idea of functional programing is based on the fact that you can treat function as value.

Examples:

UPD: after I wrote it I realized this is still not a precise explanation. You can return function pointers in C, but those functions can't access outer scope variables... the correct answer would be is that closures needed for "lexically scoped name binding in a language with first-class functions"...

lexically scoped - means that function (in this case) can access all values from outer scope and values from inner scope doesn't "leek" outside. For example, let and const are lexically scoped, but their scope is any block ({, }) not just a functions. Note the difference even though they are lexically scoped, you don't need closures for for loop, because you can't "return" for loop - it is executed once and nothing holds reference to it's inner variables.

first-class functions - functions that can be treated as values, e.g. you can assign function to variable, you can pass function as a param, you can return function from other function.