Computing Thoughts

Bruce Eckel's Programming Blog

Oct 17, 2015 - 8 minute read

Are Java 8 Lambdas Closures?

(Significantly rewritten 11/25/2015)

Based on what I’ve heard, I was surprised to discover that the short answer is “yes, with a caveat that, after explanation, isn’t terrible.” So, a qualified yes.

For the longer answer, we must first explore the question of “why, again, are we doing all this?”

Abstraction over Behavior

The simplest way to look at the need for lambdas is that they describe what computation should be performed, rather than how it should be performed. Traditionally, we’ve used external iteration, where we specify exactly how to step through a sequence and perform operations:

// InternalVsExternalIteration.java
import java.util.*;

interface Pet {
    void speak();
}

class Rat implements Pet {
    public void speak() { System.out.println("Squeak!"); }
}

class Frog implements Pet {
    public void speak() { System.out.println("Ribbit!"); }
}

public class InternalVsExternalIteration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Pet> pets = Arrays.asList(new Rat(), new Frog());
        for(Pet p : pets) // External iteration
            p.speak();
        pets.forEach(Pet::speak); // Internal iteration
    }
}

The for loop represents external iteration and specifies exactly how it is done. This kind of code is redundant, and duplicated throughout our programs. With the forEach, however, we tell it to call speak (here, using a method reference, which is more succinct than a lambda) for each element, but we don’t have to specify how the loop works. The iteration is handled internally, inside the forEach.

This “what not how” is the basic motivation for lambdas. But to understand closures, we must look more deeply, into the motivation for functional programming itself.

Functional Programming

Lambdas/Closures are there to aid functional programming. Java 8 is not suddenly a functional programming language, but (like Python) now has some support for functional programming on top of its basic object-oriented paradigm.

The core idea of functional programming is that you can create and manipulate functions, including creating functions at runtime. Thus, functions become another thing that your programs can manipulate (instead of just data). This adds a lot of power to programming.

A pure functional programming language includes other restrictions, notably data invariance. That is, you don’t have variables, only unchangeable values. This sounds overly constraining at first (how can you get anything done without variables?) but it turns out that you can actually accomplish everything with values that you can with variables (you can prove this to yourself using Scala, which is itself not a pure functional language but has the option to use values everywhere). Invariant functions take arguments and produce results without modifying their environment, and thus are much easier to use for parallel programming because an invariant function doesn’t have to lock shared resources.

Before Java 8, the only way to create functions at runtime was through bytecode generation and loading (which is quite messy and complex).

Lambdas provide two basic features:

  1. More succinct function-creation syntax.

  2. The ability to create functions at runtime, which can then be passed/manipulated by other code.

Closures concern this second issue.

What is a Closure?

A closure uses variables that are outside of the function scope. This is not a problem in traditional procedural programming – you just use the variable – but when you start producing functions at runtime it does become a problem. To see the issue, I’ll start with a Python example. Here, make_fun() is creating and returning a function called func_to_return, which is then used by the rest of the program:

# Closures.py

def make_fun():
    # Outside the scope of the returned function:
    n = 0

    def func_to_return(arg):
        nonlocal n
        # Without 'nonlocal' n += arg produces:
        # local variable 'n' referenced before assignment
        print(n, arg, end=": ")
        arg += 1
        n += arg
        return n

    return func_to_return

x = make_fun()
y = make_fun()

for i in range(5):
    print(x(i))

print("=" * 10)

for i in range(10, 15):
    print(y(i))

""" Output:
0 0: 1
1 1: 3
3 2: 6
6 3: 10
10 4: 15
==========
0 10: 11
11 11: 23
23 12: 36
36 13: 50
50 14: 65
"""

Notice that func_to_return manipulates two fields that are outside its scope: n and arg (depending on what it is, arg might be a copy, or it might refer to something outside its scope). The nonlocal declaration is required because of the way Python works: if you just start using a variable, it assumes that variable is local. Here, the compiler (yes, Python has a compiler and yes, it actually does some – admittedly quite limited – static type checking) sees that n += arg uses n which, within the scope of func_to_return, hasn’t been initialized, and generates an error message. But if we say that n is nonlocal, Python realizes that we’re using the n that’s defined outside the function scope, and which has been initialized, so it’s OK.

Now we encounter the problem: if we simply return func_to_return, what happens to n, which is outside the scope of func_to_return? Ordinarily we’d expect n to go out of scope and become unavailable, but if that happens then func_to_return won’t work. In order to support dynamic creation of functions, func_to_return must “close over” and keep alive n when the function is returned, and that’s what happens – thus the term closure.

To test make_fun(), we call it twice and capture the resulting function in x and y. The fact that x and y produce completely different results shows that each call to make_fun() produces a completely independent func_to_return with completely independent closed-over storage for n.

Java 8 Lambdas

Now let’s see what the same example looks like with lambdas:

// AreLambdasClosures.java
import java.util.function.*;

public class AreLambdasClosures {
    public Function<Integer, Integer> make_fun() {
        // Outside the scope of the returned function:
        int n = 0;
        return arg -> {
            System.out.print(n + " " + arg + ": ");
            arg += 1;
            // n += arg; // Produces error message
            return n + arg;
        };
    }
    public void try_it() {
        Function<Integer, Integer>
            x = make_fun(),
            y = make_fun();
        for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
            System.out.println(x.apply(i));
        for(int i = 10; i < 15; i++)
            System.out.println(y.apply(i));
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new AreLambdasClosures().try_it();
    }
}
/* Output:
0 0: 1
0 1: 2
0 2: 3
0 3: 4
0 4: 5
0 10: 11
0 11: 12
0 12: 13
0 13: 14
0 14: 15
*/

It’s a mixed bag: we can indeed access n, but we immediately run into trouble when we try to modify n. The error message is: local variables referenced from a lambda expression must be final or effectively final.

It turns out that, in Java, lambdas only close over values, but not variables. Java requires those values to be unchanging, as if they had been declared final. So they must be final whether you declare them that way or not. Thus, “effectively final.” And thus, Java has “closures with restrictions,” which might not be “perfect” closures, but are nonetheless still quite useful.

If we create heap-based objects, we can modify the object, because the compiler only cares that the reference is not modified. For example:

// AreLambdasClosures2.java
import java.util.function.*;

class myInt {
    int i = 0;
}

public class AreLambdasClosures2 {
    public Consumer<Integer> make_fun2() {
        myInt n = new myInt();
        return arg -> n.i += arg;
    }
}

This compiles without complaint, and you can test it by putting the final keyword on the definition for n. Of course, if you use this with any kind of concurrency, you have the problem of mutable shared state.

Lambda expressions accomplish – at least partially – the desired goal: it’s now possible to create functions dynamically. If you step outside the bounds, you get an error message, but there’s generally a way to solve the problem. It’s not as straightforward as the Python solution, but this is Java, after all, and we’ve been trained to take what we are given. And ultimately the end result, while somewhat constricted (face it, everything in Java is somewhat constricted) is not too shabby.

I asked why the feature wasn’t just called “closures” instead of “lambdas,” since it has the characteristics of a closure? The answer I got was that closure is a loaded and ill defined term, and was likely to create more heat than light. When someone says “real closures,” it too often means “what closure meant in the first language I encountered with something called closures.”

I don’t see an OO versus FP (functional programming) debate here; that is not my intention. Indeed, I don’t really see a “versus” issue. OO is good for abstracting over data (and just because Java forces objects on you doesn’t mean that objects are the answer to every problem), while FP is good for abstracting over behavior. Both paradigms are useful, and mixing them together has been even more useful for me, both in Python and now in Java 8. (I have also recently been using Pandoc, written in the pure FP Haskell language, and I’ve been extremely impressed with that, so it seems there is a valuable place for pure FP languages as well).