Re: Commands, term "closure" and online help

[Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com>]

Michael Heerdegen via "Emacs development discussions." 
<emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> Ah, now you are talking!  Indeed, functions defined with C-x 
>>> C-e are described as closures.  What would you like to see 
>>> instead?  interpreted-function, perhaps?
>
>> Perhaps "dynamically ..." rather than "interpreted"? That word 
>> is used in the part of the elisp manual that describes defun 
>> also. Something like "dynamically generated function" or 
>> "dynamically defined function"?
>
> Aren't "dynamically defined functions" bytecode functions when 
> running compiled code?  So this would not be a better term.

Which bit of the documentation are you thinking of? I can't find 
that phrase with reference to bytecode.

> AFAIU we want to tell that these functions will, when funcalled, 
> be handled by the interpreter - thus, are interpreted functions 
> in that sense.

My understanding is that the closure is constructed the moment the 
defun (et al) is done, regardless of whether the function is ever 
called.

I'm not familiar with the implementation details but it looks to 
me from a trivial test this happens unconditionally; even when the 
function being defined does not capture anything from its 
enclosing scope...

(defun blah ())

C-x C-e and then C-h f blah to see what I mean. (Maybe this gets 
optimised later?)

That's one of the reasons I think it might be helpful to refer to 
this simply as a function that is "dynamically created", or some 
variation on that.

Regards,

        - Joel