Question

I’ll be quick and jump straight to the case. The code is commented so you know my intentions. Basically, I’m building a small, HTML5 based game, and opposed to saving stuff on the server or in a cookie, I’ll just provide the player a level code. When a player enters the code (in a form of a simple hash) into a text input field, and clicks a button to load that level, the function “l” is called. That function first retrieves the player’s entries, then iterates through the list of hashes and compares them. When a match is fond, that certain level is supposed to be loaded, but there were errors. I did a little bit of debugging, and I found out that the value of the iterator (“i”), has changed inside a setTimeout! I want to pause 1 second, because loading the level immediately would be simply too quick and would look bad.

levelCodes = //Just a set of "hashes" that the player can enter to load a certain level. For now, only "code" matters.
[
    {"code": "#tc454", "l": 0},
    {"code": "#tc723", "l": 1},
]

var l = function() //This function is called when a button is pressed on the page
{
    var toLoad = document.getElementById("lc").value; //This can be "#tc723", for example

    for (i = 0; i < levelCodes.length; i++) //levelCodes.length == 2, so this should run 2 times, and in the last time i should be 1
        if (levelCodes[i].code == toLoad) //If I put "#tc723" this will be true when i == 1, and this happens
        {
            console.log(i); //This says 1
            setTimeout(function(){console.log(i)}, 1000); //This one says 2!
        }
}

Answer 1

The for loop continuously increments i until the loop condition is met, even though the code in the for loop does not execute, when the code in the setTimeout executes it shows the current value of i – which is 2.