What happens to local variables when a function returns?
They are destroyed with the popped stack frame, unless a closure is holding a reference to the variable environment, in which case they persist.
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More FAQs in JavaScript Function Invocation and the Call Stack
An execution context is created, memory is allocated for locals, a frame is pushed onto the call stack, the body runs line-by-line, and the frame is popped on return. The return value is passed to the caller.
It immediately pops the current function's frame from the call stack. The return value is handed to the calling function, which resumes at the next statement.
At invocation (except for arrow functions). The way you call the function (plain, method, call, apply, bind, new) determines this. Arrow functions inherit this from their lexical scope at definition time.
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