You Don't Know JS: Scope & Closures

Chapter 5. Scope Closure

We arrive at this point with hopefully a very healthy, solid understanding of how scope works.

We turn our attention to an incredibly important, but persistently elusive, almost mythological, part of the language: closure. If you have followed our discussion of lexical scope thus far, the payoff is that closure is going to be, largely, anticlimactic, almost self-obvious. There’s a man behind the wizard’s curtain, and we’re about to see him. No, his name is not Crockford!

If however you have nagging questions about lexical scope, now would be a good time to go back and review Chapter 2 before proceeding.

Enlightenment

For those who are somewhat experienced in JavaScript but have perhaps never fully grasped the concept of closures, understanding closure can seem like a special nirvana that one must strive and sacrifice to attain.

I recall years back when I had a firm grasp on JavaScript but had no idea what closure was. The hint that there was this other side to the language, one that promised even more capability than I already possessed, but it teased and taunted me. I remember reading through the source code of early frameworks trying to understand how it actually worked. I remember the first time something of the “module pattern” began to emerge in my mind. I remember the aha! moments quite vividly.

What I didn’t know back then, what took me years to understand, and what I hope to impart to you presently, is this secret: closure is all around ...