ELisp doesn't support closures

I'm hacking some ELisp functions recently and I realize that ELisp doesn't have a filter function or support closures. That's disappointing. One sort of takes it for granted nowadays that a decent language will have both. AFAIK ELisp was written before there was a Common Lisp standard. But even then, I'm surprised it didn't evolve with the times.

I don't mind writing my own filter function since I'm only going to have to do it once. But not having closures is a little bigger impact.

Instead of being able to write something like this ...

(defun string-match-c (s)
  (lambda (x) (string-match s x)))

I'll have to write this instead.

(defun string-match-c (str)
  (lexical-let ((s str))
    (lambda (x) (string-match s x))))

Usage is the same for both.

(filter (string-match-c "ba") '("foo" "bar" "baz"))
;; => ("bar" "baz")

But they really can't compare to Haskell, which doesn't need a string-match-c function defined since it supports partial application.

filter (isPrefixOf "ba") ["foo", "bar", "baz"]

Emacs is still my favorite editor, but I sure wish it was using Common Lisp, Scheme or Haskell.

Resources

• Faking a closure
• Write your own filter function