In Node, a function called setTimeout
allows us to schedule a function call with a delay of a specific number of milliseconds. The clearTimeout
function is used to revoke the effect of the setTimeout
function. In other words, when the clearTimeout
function is called, the function call scheduled by setTimeout
does not execute.
Both of these functions are found in the Timers
module of Node.js.
More detail about the
setTimeout
function can be found here.
clearTimeout(timerIdentifier);
In the above snippet of code, timerIdentifier
is a Timeout
object returned by the setTimeout
function, as shown in the example below.
timeIdentifier
is passed as a parameter to the clearTimeout
function to revoke the respective scheduled function call.
console.log("Before the setTimeout call")let timerID = setTimeout(() => {console.log("Hello, World!")}, 1000);console.log("After the setTimeout call")clearTimeout(timerID)
In the above snippet of code, we can see that the function call scheduled by the setTimeout
function does not take place because it was cleared by the clearTimeout
function.
function myFunction(platform){console.log("Hi, Welcome to " + platform);}console.log("Before the setTimeout call")let timerID = setTimeout(myFunction, 1000, "Educative");console.log("After the setTimeout call")clearTimeout(timerID)
In the above example, it is evident that the clearTimeout
function call on line 9 unscheduled the function call, which was scheduled inside the setTimeout
function on line 6.
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