Question

Can someone please explain the difference between closures and continuations? The corresponding articles in wikipedia do not really compare the differences between the two.

Answer 1

A closure is a function that captures data from the environment on which it was declared.

int myVar = 0;
auto foo = [&] () { myVar++; }; <- This lambda forms a closure by capturing myVar
foo();
assert(myVar == 1);

A continuation is a more abstract concept, and refers to what code should be executed afterwards. It can be implemented using a closure.

myTask = Task([] () { something(); });
myTask.then([=] () { myFoo.bar(); }); // This closure is the continuation of the task
myTask.run();