Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

Closures Are Reference Types

Closures are reference types. This means that when you assign a function to a constant or variable, you are actually setting that constant or variable to point to the function. You are not creating a distinct copy of that function. One important consequence of this fact is that any information captured by the function’s scope will be changed if you call the function via a new constant or variable.

To see this, create a new constant and set it equal to your growBy(_:) function.

Listing 13.13 Duplicate growth

... func makePopulationTracker(forInitialPopulation population: Int) -> (Int) -> Int { var totalPopulation = population func populationTracker(growth: Int) -> Int { totalPopulation += growth return ...