JavaScript: passing arguments to setTimeout()

JavaScript prides itself on by asynchronous, which I find causes more complications than it solves, as in most cases I need code to execute step by step and not all at the same time. It makes, in my opinion, a lot more sense to have extra complications in the rare cases where I need asynchronous than to have extra complications in the very common cases where I need synchronous.

Among the trivial things that get unnecessarily complicated with asynchronous by default, is pausing. In many programming languages, when you want to pause, it’s just a matter of a trivial line, for instance:
– in PHP: sleep(X)
– in Python: time.sleep(X) (you need to import time for this to work, though)

In JavaScript, you’ll have to refactor your code, putting what you want to delay inside a separate function, and use setTimout(). That is, unless you want to saturate the CPU with an infinite loop for X seconds.

setTimeout() looks simple enough at first:

setTimeout(myDelayedFunction, 1000);

But there is a catch if you want to pass arguments. For instance, this won’t work (arg1 and arg2 will appear to myDelayedFunction as undefined):

setTimeout(function(){
    myDelayedFunction(arg1, arg2);
}, 1000);

To passe arguments to the function inside, you’ll have to use this:

setTimeout(function(A, B){
    myDelayedFunction(A, B);
}, 1000, arg1, arg1);

Or also this should work too (not tested)

setTimeout(myDelayedFunction, 1000, arg1, arg1);

Source and other variations there on Stackoverflow