Doesn't JavaScript support closures with local variables?

Fixed Jon's answer by adding an additional anonymous function:

function create() {
  for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
    closures[i] = (function(tmp) {
        return function() {
          alert("i = " + tmp);
        };
    })(i);
  }
}

The explanation is that JavaScript's scopes are function-level, not block-level, and creating a closure just means that the enclosing scope gets added to the lexical environment of the enclosed function.

After the loop terminates, the function-level variable i has the value 5, and that's what the inner function 'sees'.

---

As a side note: you should beware of unnecessary function object creation, espacially in loops; it's inefficient, and if DOM objects are involved, it's easy to create circular references and therefore introduce memory leaks in Internet Explorer.

I think this might be what you want:

var closures = [];

function createClosure(i) {
    closures[i] = function() {
        alert("i = " + i);
    };
}

function create() {
    for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        createClosure(i);
    }
}

The solution is to have a self-executing lambda wrapping your array push. You also pass i as an argument to that lambda. The value of i inside the self-executing lambda will shadow the value of the original i and everything will work as intended:

function create() {
    for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) (function(i) {
        closures[i] = function() {
            alert("i = " + i);
        };
    })(i);
}

Another solution would be to create yet another closure which captures the correct value of i and assigns it to another variable which would "get caught" in the final lambda:

function create() {
    for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) (function() {
        var x = i;

        closures.push(function() {
            alert("i = " + x);
        });
    })();
}