[swatcoder]

That's just terrible input validation and has nothing to do with setTimeout.

If your code would misbehave outside a certain range of values and you're input might span a larger range, you should be checking your input against the range that's valid. Your sample code simply doesn't do that, and that's why there's a bug.

That the bug happens to involve a timer is irrelevant.

[ashkankiani]

You are a bad programmer if you think silently doing the wrong thing is not a bug. The right thing to do with unexpected input as the setTimeout library author is to raise an exception.

[balls187]

The wrong thing, or the undefined thing?

Feel free to make a proposal to ECMA.

[log_e]

It's in the standard library. You're a bad programmer if you don't learn the ins and outs of the standard library, or make sweeping generalizations.

[notpushkin]

Standard library is an API just like any other library. The only thing different about it is backward compatibility (which in JS is paramount and the is reason setTimeout can't be fixed directly). It is a bad design still.

[paulddraper]

> If your code would misbehave outside a certain range of values and you're input might span a larger range, you should be checking your input against the range that's valid.

What's funny is you think that about the caller of setTimeout but not setTimeout itself :)

[tourist2d]

> That's just terrible input validation and has nothing to do with setTimeout.

Except for the fact that this behaviour is surprising.

> you should be checking your input against the range that's valid. Your sample code simply doesn't do that, and that's why there's a bug.

Indeed, so why doesn't setTimeout internally do that?

[drdaeman]

> Indeed, so why doesn't setTimeout internally do that?

Given that `setTimeout` is a part of JavaScript's ancient reptilian brain, I wouldn't be surprised it doesn't do those checks just because there's some silly compatibility requirement still lingering and no one in the committees is brave enough to make a breaking change.

(And then, what should setTimeout do if delay is NaN? Do nothing? Call immediately? Throw an exception? Personally I'd prefer it to throw, but I don't think there's any single undeniably correct answer.)

Given the trend to move away from the callbacks, I wonder why there is no `async function sleep(delay)` in the language, that would be free to sort this out nicely without having to be compatible with stuff from '90s. Or something like that.

[erinaceousjones]

I think it's more likely that it's just "undefined behaviour" and up to the implementers of the JavaScript engines. Given that modern browsers do limit and throttle how much you can do with setTimeout in some situations (try to use setTimeout on a page after you've switched to a VR context! More than like 120hz and it'll just.... Not run the timeout anymore, from experience with Chrome).

The browser devs have decided it's acceptable to change the behaviour of setTimeout in some situations.

https://developer.chrome.com/blog/timer-throttling-in-chrome...