I'm still struggling with this concept. I have two different Person objects, very simply:

;Person1 = (function() {
    function P (fname, lname) {
        P.FirstName = fname;
        P.LastName = lname;
        return P;
    }
    P.FirstName = '';
    P.LastName = '';
    var prName = 'private';
    P.showPrivate = function() { alert(prName); };
    return P;
})();

;Person2 = (function() {
    var prName = 'private';
    this.FirstName = '';
    this.LastName = ''; 
    this.showPrivate = function() { alert(prName); };
    return function(fname, lname) {
        this.FirstName = fname;
        this.LastName = lname;
    }   
})();

And let's say I invoke them like this:

var s = new Array();

//Person1
s.push(new Person1("sal", "smith"));
s.push(new Person1("bill", "wonk"));
alert(s[0].FirstName);
alert(s[1].FirstName);
s[1].showPrivate();

//Person2
s.push(new Person2("sal", "smith"));
s.push(new Person2("bill", "wonk"));
alert(s[2].FirstName);
alert(s[3].FirstName);
s[3].showPrivate();

The Person1 set alerts "bill" twice, then alerts "private" once -- so it recognizes the showPrivate function, but the local FirstName variable gets overwritten.

The second Person2 set alerts "sal", then "bill", but it fails when the showPrivate function is called. The new keyword here works as I'd expect, but showPrivate (which I thought was a publicly exposed function within the closure) is apparently not public.

I want to get my object to have distinct copies of all local variables and also expose public methods -- I've been studying closures quite a bit, but I'm still confused on this one. Thanks for your help.