Question

I’ve got a function that is called an unknown number of times. I need to know how many times the function was run so I’m doing:

(function () {    

    var i = 0,
        increment = function () {
            if (i === 0) {
                setTimeout(function () {
                    console.log('increment was called ' + i + ' times.'); // increment was called 3 times.
                    i = 0;
                }, 0);
            }
            i++;
        };

    increment();
    increment();
    increment();

})();

Can anyone tell me whether this is reliable across all browsers or whether there’s a better pattern to achieve this?

Answer 1

setTimeout() places a function on the queue, which is executed when all the other functions have been run.

If you call setTimeout() a few times before calling increment(), you will probably notice the i variable reaching a value greater than 1.