On Jan 19, 2012, at 21:39 , Ben Bolker wrote: > Ajay Askoolum <aa2e72e <at> yahoo.co.uk> writes: > >> >> Michael, thank you, especially for the link. I think I understand. >> >> The vocabulary is so different! I know 'closure' as 'user-defined function'. >> > > Not quite. All (??) user-defined functions are closures, but lots > of non-user-defined functions are closures too ... >
Also, it is not actually the function that is the closure, it is the function completed with its environment, which is where, during evaluation, unbound objects will be sought. The function itself is a parsed version of the function definition. When called, almost all functions will need to find something from their environment, e.g. the "<-" operator. The only functions that are completely self-contained are those that return a constant or one of the function arguments (maybe a few more). -- Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
