Perl中的闭包（closure）

什么是闭包，“This is a notion out of the Lisp world that says if you define an anonymous function in a particular lexical context, it pretends to run in that context even when it's called outside of the context.”【2】。在面向对象的语言里面，“A closure is a callable object that retains information from the scope in which it was created. From this definition, you can see that an inner class is an object-oriented closure, because it doesn’t just contain each piece of information from the outer-class object ("the scope in which it was created"), but it automatically holds a reference back to the whole outer-class object, where it has permission to manipulate all the members, even private ones.”【3】

先看这个例子：

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

{
	my $inc = 10;

	sub incr {
		print "$inc\n";
		$inc++;
	}
}

incr();
incr();

#prints:
#10
#11

这个例子说明命名函数默认是全局的，即使是定义在一个block里面。我们不能引用变量$inc，但是却可以调用函数。

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

sub make_incr {
	my $inc = shift;
	return sub { print "$inc\n"; $inc++ };
}

my $c1 = make_incr(10);
my $c2 = make_incr(20);

$c1->();
$c2->();
$c1->();
$c2->();

#prints:
#10
#20
#11
#21

这个例子我们看到了，Perl的函数返回其实是一个匿名函数引用，这个就是magic所在了。这个也是Perl如何实现闭包的。

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

sub exclaim {
	my $prefix = shift;
	return sub { print "$prefix $_[0]!\n" };
}

my $batman = exclaim('Indeed');
my $robin  = exclaim('Holy');

$robin->('Mackerel');    # prints: Holy Mackerel!
$batman->('Robin');      # prints: Indeed Robin!

那么闭包有什么作用呢？以下摘自“Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules”的第6章【1】：

用法一 在subroutine中返回subroutine的引用，通常作为回调函数：

use File::Find;

sub create_find_callbacks_that_sum_the_size {
	my $total_size = 0;
	return ( sub { $total_size += -s if -f }, sub { return $total_size } );
}

my ( $count_em, $get_results ) = create_find_callbacks_that_sum_the_size();

find( $count_em, "bin" );

my $total_size = &$get_results();

print "total size of bin is $total_size \n";

这段代码用于计算某个目录下所包含的所有文件的大小之和.

用法二  使用闭环变量作为输入，用作函数生成器，来生成不同的函数指针：

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

sub print_bigger_than {
	my $minimum_size = shift;
	return sub { print "$File::Find::name/n" if -f and -s >= $minimum_size };
}

my $bigger_than_1024 = print_bigger_than(1024);
find( $bigger_than_1024, "bin" );

print_bigger_than在这里相当于一个函数生成器，不同的输入变量可以生成不同的函数指针.这里生成了一个可以打印出文件大小大于1024字节文件名的回调函数.

用法三 作为静态局部变量使用，提供了c语言静态局部变量的功能:

BEGIN {
	my $countdown = 10;
	sub count_down { $countdown-- }
	sub count_remaining { $countdown }
}

这里用到了关键字BEGIN. BEGIN的作用就是，当perl编译完这段代码之后，停止当前编译，然后直接进入运行阶段，执行BEGIN块内部的代码.然后再回到编译状态， 继续编译剩余的代码. 这就保证了无论BEGIN块位于程序中的哪个位置，在调用count_down之前，$countdown被确保初始化为10.

最后附上一个相当cool的例子，来在“Perl Best Practices”：

# Generate a new sorting routine whose name is the string in $sub_name
# and which sorts on keys extracted by the subroutine referred to by $key_sub_ref
sub make_sorter {
	my ( $sub_name, $key_sub_ref ) = @_;

	# Create a new anonymous subroutine that implements the sort...
	my $sort_sub_ref = sub {

		# Sort using the Schwartzian transform...
		return map { $_->[0] }                # 3. Return original value
		  sort     { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }    # 2. Compare keys
		  map { [ $_, $key_sub_ref->() ] }    # 1. Extract key, cache with value
		  @_;                                 # 0. Perform sort on full arg list
	};

	# Install the new anonymous sub into the caller's namespace
	use Sub::Installer;
	caller->install_sub( $sub_name, $sort_sub_ref );
	return;
}

# and then...
make_sorter( sort_sha => sub { sha512($_) } );
make_sorter( sort_ids => sub { /^ID:(\d+)/ } );
make_sorter( sort_len => sub { length } );

# and later...
@names_shortest_first = sort_len(@names);
@names_digested_first = sort_sha(@names);
@names_identity_first = sort_ids(@names);

参考：

1. http://blog.csdn.net/mac_philips/article/details/6058946
2. http://unlser1.unl.csi.cuny.edu/faqs/perl-faq/Q3.14.html
3. Think in Java, 4th
4. http://www.itworld.com/nl/perl/08302001/
5. http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/perl/advprog/ch04_03.htm