Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In computer programming, an anonymous function (function literal, expression or block) is a function definition that is not bound to an identifier. Anonymous functions are often arguments being passed to higher-order functions or used for constructing the result of a higher-order function that needs to return a function. [ 1 ]
The usual alternative is to use named functions and named recursion. Given an anonymous function, this can be done either by binding a name to the function, as in named function expressions in JavaScript, or by assigning the function to a variable and then calling the variable, as in function statements in JavaScript.
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
Immediately invoked function expressions may be written in a number of different ways. [3] A common convention is to enclose the function expression – and optionally its invocation operator – with the grouping operator, [4] in parentheses, to tell the parser explicitly to expect an expression.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 January 2025. High-level programming language Not to be confused with Java (programming language), Javanese script, or ECMAScript. JavaScript Screenshot of JavaScript source code Paradigm Multi-paradigm: event-driven, functional, imperative, procedural, object-oriented Designed by Brendan Eich of ...
Non-local variables are the primary reason it is difficult to support nested, anonymous, higher-order and thereby first-class functions in a programming language. If the nested function or functions are (mutually) recursive, it becomes hard for the compiler to know exactly where on the call stack the non-local variable was allocated, as the frame pointer only points to the local variable of ...
First-class functions have often only been supported in later revisions of the language, including C# 2.0 and Apple's Blocks extension to C, C++, and Objective-C. C++11 has added support for anonymous functions and closures to the language, but because of the non-garbage collected nature of the language, special care has to be taken for non ...
An anonymous function is a literal for the function type. In contrast to literals, variables or constants are symbols that can take on one of a class of fixed values, the constant being constrained not to change. Literals are often used to initialize variables; for example, in the following, 1 is an integer literal and the three letter string ...