How to Use Function "Constructors"

Examples

Difference between Function constructor and function declaration

Functions created with the Function constructor do not create closures to their creation contexts; they always are created in the global scope. When running them, they will only be able to access their own local variables and global ones, not the ones from the scope in which the Function constructor was created. This is different from using eval() with code for a function expression.

// Create a global property with `var`
var x = 10;

function createFunction1() {
  const x = 20;
  return new Function("return x;"); // this `x` refers to global `x`
}

function createFunction2() {
  const x = 20;
  function f() {
    return x; // this `x` refers to the local `x` above
  }
  return f;
}

const f1 = createFunction1();
console.log(f1()); // 10
const f2 = createFunction2();
console.log(f2()); // 20

While this code works in web browsers, f1() will produce a ReferenceError in Node.js, as x will not be found. This is because the top-level scope in Node is not the global scope, and x will be local to the module.