Hi all.

I must confess to being a little ashamed. Having worked with perl for a reasonable length of time, the concept of a closure should not prove to be so enigmatic. To alleviate my ignorance, I was hoping some of you could evaluate the code below and tell me what is happening at each stage of program execution. Granted, this is a very simple closure but in the event that someone asks me to explain how/why it works, I would probably provide an inadequate answer (at best).

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

sub shoppingList {

  my $item = shift();
  return sub
  {
    my $otherItem = shift();
    print "I need to buy a $item and a $otherItem.\n";
  };
}

my $itemInBasket = shoppingList( "sweater" );
my $newItemInBasket = shoppingList( "lipstick" );

&$itemInBasket( "pair of shoes" );
&$newItemInBasket( "purse" );
[download]

Thanks in advance for any help you are able to provide.

-Katie.