Question

I am trying to get Step.js library working properly with coffee-script. I am quite new to coffee but here is my attempt:

setTimeout(
  =>
    console.log("step 1 at #{new Date}")
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 2 at #{new Date}")
        setTimeout(
          =>
            console.log("step 3 at #{new Date}")
          10000
        )
      10000
    )
  10000
)

# step 1 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:18:51 GMT-0600 (CST)
# step 2 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:19:01 GMT-0600 (CST)
# step 3 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:19:11 GMT-0600 (CST)

should be the same as:

step(
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 1 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 2 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 3 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
)

# step 1 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:12:04 GMT-0600 (CST)
# step 2 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:12:04 GMT-0600 (CST)
# step 3 at Tue Nov 13 2012 13:12:04 GMT-0600 (CST)

As you can see from the above example step is executing all the steps at the same time instead of doing them one at a time like it is supposed to. I am not too sure why that is right now.

Answer 1

CoffeeScript implicitly adds a return in front of the last expression in a function. This is a problem with Step, which assumes that if you return anything, that step is synchronous.

The solution is to add an explicit return at the end of each step function:

step(
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 1 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
    return
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 2 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
    return
  ->
    setTimeout(
      =>
        console.log("step 3 at #{new Date}")
        this(null)
      10000
    )
    return
)