Question

I want to trigger the setTimeout callback function, but it seems not work. What’s the problem?

var fs = require("fs");

// set timeout callback
setTimeout(function(){
    console.log("5000ms timeout");
    process.exit(0);
}, 5000 );

// do something more than 5000ms
while(true) {
    var stats = fs.statSync("foo");
    console.log("while statement running...");
}

when I run this, after 5s, the program is still running

Answer 1

The while(true) is a tight spin loop which prevents any other asynchronous callbacks from firing. Don’t do this in a single-threaded environment. You can use setInterval with a small timeout instead of while(true).