CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2010/ch1 1b gb

What is a Closure?

Before diving into the differences of closures in Ruby viz a viz other languages, lets look at some traditional definitions of the same, and some history of closures to better understand the concept at hand.

A closure is a first-class function with free variables that are bound in the lexical environment. Closures:Wikipedia¹

For the layman, lets break up the technical sounding definition into easier terms. Basically a first class function is something that can be passed onto as arguments to other functions i.e. it can behave like any other object or variables. A closure has its own variables with last as long as the scope of the closure and are independent of any other scope. (We will see later, how this is of importance)

Another author of a Blog:A definition for closures² defines a closure as

A closure is a function that captures the bindings of free variables in its lexical context.

It’s evident that this follows what we have written earlier.

Another writer states

A closure is a property associated with functions; when a function manipulates input and produces output which holds the features and characteristics of the input, then the function is said to possess (we should say 'satisfy' instead of 'possess') the closure property.Closures Definition³

Going further into layman’s terms, we could say that a closure is a kind of a ‘hidden function’ (similar construct in C, later) which is used by programmers in various languages to provide enhanced functionality in their programs

Landin is credited with introducing the term closure while referring to a lambda expression whose ‘Open Bindings’ or ‘free variables’ that have been bound ‘closed’ in a lexical environment resulting in a closed expression or ‘closure’.Closures:Wikipedia¹

Since we are here to compare all types of closures with Ruby, lets look into the closure definition of the Ruby creator. Yukihiro Matsumoto defines closure as a Nameless function object and goes on to say that A closure object has code to run, the executable, and state around the code, the scope. Blocks and Closures in Ruby⁴

Closures in Ruby

The concept of closures is quite analogous to first-class functions i.e. it facilitate encapsulation of a certain behavior for example loop abstraction. Moving a step further it also grants access to the context which means you get to capture the environment in which the closure is based irrespective of the scope of the context.

Ruby offers – not one – but four different ways of creating closures. They are blocks , procs ,lambdas and methods. The syntax varies in a trifling way than the other however each exhibits a distinct behavior.

Let us go over all of them one by one

Blocks

The simplest way to define a block would be calling it a ‘nameless’ entity which is nothing but a group of statements. Also unlike functions you don’t have to name the block in the methods when it is called. Consider the following lines of code:

   class Array
  def traverse!
    self.each_with_index do |z, i|
      self[i] = yield(z)
    end
  end
end

odd_val = [11, 9, 7, 5]

odd_val.traverse! do |z|
  z - 1
end

puts odd_val
    
    # => [10,8,6,4]

It is apparent from the code that the block interacts with the array elements and decrements each element by 1. It is important to note that the block is automatically converted to proc object and there is no explicit call to it. The way to use it is using ‘yield’ keyword. Hence, blocks are not reusable i.e it the same block cannot be called for a different array. But their importance lies in the fact that they provide abstraction as well as transactional control in some cases.

Procs

Procs can be said to be the super-set of blocks. The difference between procs and blocks is that is since proc is called using an argument instead of using the keyword ‘yield’ like blocks, the code is reusable. Hence, one can conclude - a block is a proc which cannot be saved i.e. it can be used only once. Lets see an example to understand it better.

class Array
  def traverse!(obj)
    self.each_with_index do |z, i|
    self[i] = obj.call(z)
    end
end
end
Procsarray = [2,4,5,6]
Procsarray2 = [6,5,4,3]

decrement = Proc.new do |z|
  z - 1
end


Procsarray.traverse!(decrement)
Procsarray2.traverse!(decrement)

puts Procsarray.inspect
puts Procsarray2.inspect

output:

[1, 3, 4, 5]
[5, 4, 3, 2]

As we can see the proc has been invoked twice for two different set of elements which confirms the re-usability of procs. Hence, its safe to assume Procs as functions in RUBY.

Lambda

Lambdas , more commonly known as ‘anonymous functions’ in other languages similar to procs. But unlike procs, lambdas check the number of arguments passed . Consider the following piece of code:

c = lambda{|a,b| puts a +b}
c.call(2,3)
c.call(2)

The second statement prints 5 as the output. At the same time third statement gives rise to an ArgumentError.

Another noticeable difference would be they way return is dealt with by Procs and lambda. The return from Procs is a return from the method in which it is called whereas a return from lambda goes back to the calling function. One can also say that the return of a proc overrides the calling methods return however return from lambda does not.

Method

RUBY provides one more way of implementing closures with the help of RUBY’s method method.Closure by Method⁵ Following the previous example used for procs , the only modification in the code is the way ‘square’ function is applied to the array.

def decrement(z)
z - 1
end
array = [3,4,5,6]
array.traverse!(method(:decrement))

Here, the square method is converted to a method object and then passed to the function. Using a method object is conceptually same as using lambda however lambdas do not have names but methods do.

Closures in Languages Other than Ruby

Java

RUBY has some direct language support which facilitates the use of closures.JAVA on the other hand supports closures indirectly in the form of anonymous classes or inner classes. Anonymous inner classes are often used in event handling for implementing adapter class. Using inner classes one can gain access to all the attributes and private data of the outer class which resembles closures.

Let us consider the following example:

Public class test{

Private JFrame f;

Private JTextField txt;

Class myclass extends MouseMotionAdapter{

Public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent e){

String s =” X co-ordinate : “ +e.getX() + “Y co-ordinate: “ +e.getY();

txt.setText(s);

}

Public void launchFrame(){

…

…

f.addMouseMotionListener(new myclass());

}

As we can see, in the function launchFrame() the object of inner class is created using keyword new. The object is used to call the function mouseDragged() which gives access the text field which is declared in outer class thus implementing a closure.

Another way of implementing the same code is including the entire class definition within the scope of an expression i.e.

f.addMouseMotionListener(new MouseMotionAdapter() {

Public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent e){

String s =” X co-ordinate : “ +e.getX() + “Y co-ordinate: “ +e.getY();

txt.setText(s);

}});

Closures are officially the newest addition to Java 7, the latest version of Java Closures in Java 7⁶. The previous mentioned partial closures in Java are highly simplified with the help of this new functionality that has been proposed. The above example can be written this as:

f.addMouseMotionListener(#(MouseEvent e){

String s =” X co-ordinate : “ +e.getX() + “Y co-ordinate: “ +e.getY();

txt.setText(s);

});

JavaScript

Closures in JavaScript help us exploit the private variables and methods while creating the JavaScript objects. This is achieved by writing nested functions and making a call to the outer function and ‘freeze’ the inner function by providing it an external reference. Closures in Javascript⁷ The following example will clarify the technique:

function cube_outer(a,b) {

      var ex2 = 2;
      var ex3 = 3;
      function cube_inner(s){
                 if(s == “plus”)
                 var result = Math.pow(a,ex3)+3*(Math.pow(a,ex2))*b + 3*(Math.pow(b,ex2))*a + Math.pow(b,ex3);
                 else if(s == “minus”)
                 var result = Math.pow(a,ex3)-3*(Math.pow(a,ex2))*b + 3*(Math.pow(b,ex2))*a - Math.pow(b,ex3);
                 return result;
      }           
      return cube_inner ;
      }
var cube =cube_outer(3,4);
console.log(‘cube is = “ + cube(plus));

Unlike RUBY , JavaScript lacks the syntax to use closures in a varied manner. Nevertheless, it can be used as a remedy for quite a few problems faced in JavaScript. The infamous looping problem in JavaScript can be solved successfully using closures. Consider the following piece of code.

function  addButton()                                                                                                                                                {                              										
var buttons  = new Array[5] ;									
for(var i = 0;i< 5;i++){ 										 
Buttons[i].onclick = function () {alert(“Button” + i);};
}}

In here, 5 buttons are created and when each button is clicked upon an alert event indicating the correct button number is suppose to take place. Since all the elements in the array instead of having the value of ‘i’ have reference to the same variable i(local variables are not copied but kept by reference) , all buttons on clicking display ‘4’.

This problem can be taken care of by taking the snapshot of ‘i’ each time the loop is executed. Hence, we can write a function which and invoke it in the loop.

function  getvalue(x){											
return function(){alert (“Button” + x);};								
}
function addButton()										
{for(var i =0;i<5;i++) {									  	
Buttons[i].onclick = getvalue(i);					    			
}}

Thus, for every value of i a new execution context is formed using a closure and the value of i is retained. This is a good demonstration of the power of closures to capture the lexical context at a certain point in the program flow.

C++

Overloading ()

In C++, closures are achieved by means of a feature called functors or function objects. C++ uses the traditional OO approach of operator overloading to achieve closures. The operator () is overloaded to pass on a function instead of a function pointer to another function, behaving as a object. Here is an example

class square_class {   
public:   bool operator()(int a) {
     return a*a;   } 
}; 
template <class SquaringFunctor>  void square_ints(int* begin_items, int num_items, SquaringFunctor c); 
int main() {
     int items[] = {4, 3, 1, 2};     
     square_class functor;     
     square_ints(items, sizeof(items)/sizeof(int), functor); 
}

In the above code, the square_ints function has the squaring code called inside it using the overloaded () operator.

Lambda Expressions

Lambda expressions like the ones used in Ruby have been recently discussed to and ratified by the C++ standards committee. Such features were already avaible in compilers such as Microsoft VC++. Lambda Expressions in VC++⁸ The above squaring function can be written in Lambda expression in C++ as

Vector <int> v;
for (int i = 0; i < 4; ++i)     {
       v.push_back(i);    
} 

for_each(v.begin(), v.end(), [&square] (int n)                 //Lambda Expression here embedded in For each
{
n= n*n;  
});

C#

In C#, closures are implemented using delegates. Delegates are type-safe function pointers used by the .net framework. They are used to call a method and optionally an object to call the method on. Viz a viz closures, delegates allow us to call upon a method in its own lexical environment and can be treated like the object having the scope in which it was declared. .NET 2.0 onwards, these delegates are implemented as follows

We can take the example of the list of integers which need to be squared.

public static func<int> Square() 
{ 
     func<int,> sqr = delegate(int item)                             
                     {                                 
                        return item*item;                             
                     };
     return sqr; }
}

...

var v = Square();

foreach(int i in intarr)
{
     console.writeline(v(i));
}

C

Closures in C were not implemented from the beginning due to its compiled nature. Recently, Apple introduced support for closures in their version of the C Compiler included with Mac OS 10.6. This feature uses the operator '^' to define blocks or collection of code which can be used for passing the whole of it to other functions. It works much like function pointers in C. Blocks for C⁹,Closures in Mac OS 10.6¹⁰ Here is an example.

square = ^ int (int a) { return a * a; };
r = square(i);

Perl

Closures in perl can be achieved by making a reference to a function. This reference can then be used to call the function whenever needed.Perl Documentation¹¹ Taking our squaring example, we can write it in perl as

sub raise_to_power{
     my $Power = shift
    return sub { my $sub_arg = shift; 
                 return $sub_arg ** $power; }; 
    }
my $func = raise_to_power(2); 
print func->(2);

Python

Closures in Python are implemented using Lambda or Nested functions.

Python Lambda

Lambda in Python Lambdas in Python¹² is much like Ruby itself. However this method has a shortcoming that the result of this has to be a single expression and not anything more. So it can be used for only simple rudimentary closures. Carrying on with our previous examples, we can write

def square(int)
return lambda i:i*i, int

Nested Functions

Another way to write closures in Python is to use nested functions Closures in Python¹³, meaning writing functions inside functions. Our squaring example can be written in this scheme as

def power(integer):
def calulate(input):
nonlocal integer
input = input**integer
return input
return calculate

f = power(2)
print(f(2), f(3), f(4))

There is a caveat however, to closures in Python. All variables inside a closure in Python are read only.

All closures at a glance

Closures at a Glance

	Ruby	Java	JavaScript	C++	C#	C	Perl	Python
Construct	Blocks,Procs,Lambda,Method	Anonymous Inner Classes	Nested Functions	Overloading(),Lambda Expressions	Delegates	Blocks	References to Functions	Lambda,Nested Functions
Example	do |n| ... end square = Proc.new do |n|... array_1.iterate!(square) c = lambda{|a,b| puts a +b} array.iterate!(method(:square))	new Adapterclass({function()})	function outerf{ cube_inner(s) {.... return inners}return cube_inner}	public:bool operator()(int a) {... for_each(v.begin(), v.end(), [&evenCount] (int n)..	func<int> sqr = delegate(int item)	square = ^ int (int a) { return a * a; };	return sub { my $sub_arg = shift;..	return lambda i:i*i, int def power(integer): def calulate(input): nonlocal integer input = input**integer return input return calculate
Comment	Most Versatile of all closure providing languages	Java closures are verbose	failure to declare a variable as var creates an accidental closure in JavaScript	Most closure features are provided in party specific compilers, such as VC++	Improved function Pointer	Highly vendor specific, currently in MAC OS	A function returns and inner function pointer which completes closure	The return of a lambda can only be a single expression, all variables inside the closure are read only

References

1 Closures:Wikipedia

2 Gafters Blog: A definition for closures

3 Closures Definition, Linuxgazette

4 Blocks and Closures in Ruby

5 Closure by Method in Ruby

6 Closures in Java 7

7 Understanding Closures in Javascript

8 Lambda Expressions in VC++

9 Blocks for C

10Closures in Mac OS 10.6

11Perl Documentation

12Lambdas in Python

13Closures in Python