Function finished, Execution contexts are gone, why can I still access its variable?
Every execution context has a space in memory where the variables and functions that created inside of it lives. Under normal circumstances, the JavaScript engine will eventually clear this memory space out(garbage collection). But at this moment, that memory space still exist though execution context was gone(popped off the execution stack).
It means even though the function was finished, any function created inside of it still have the reference of the function’s memory space. Function is gone, its execution context is gone, but what’s in memory for that execution context isn’t, and the JavaScript engine make sure that we can still go down scope chain and find it.
As we can say, the execution context is closed in its outer variables. This phenomenon: a function closing in all the variables that it’s supposed to have access to, is called a closure.
The scope is intact
Closures are just a feature to make sure that functions has access to their outer variables, it doesn’t matter whether the outer functions have finished running or not.
They just happens. The JavaScript engine create the closures, and we just take advantages of it.
closure example:
create a function factory:
setTimeout:
callbacks