Is the following JavaScript construct called a Closure? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Kindof. It's doesn't really close around anything though, and it's called immediately, so it's really just an anonymous function.

Take this code:

function foo() {
    var a = 42;
    return function () {
        return a;
    }
}

var bar = foo();
var zab = bar();
alert(zab);

Here the function returned by foo() is a closure. It closes around the a variable. Even though a would apear to have long gone out of scope, invoking the closure by calling it still returns the value.