Why does the following setTimeout print straight away?

Question

The following prints my message straight away

setTimeout(console.log('delayed hello world'), 10000);

It's a little bit counterintuitive. And since my message print straight away what happens at the end of 10 seconds?

possible duplicate of [Why is the method executed immediately when I use setTimeout?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7137401/why-is-the-method-executed-immediately-when-i-use-settimeout) and [so many others](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=why+does+settimeout+execute+the+function+immediately). — Felix Kling, May 11 '12 at 09:01

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 11 '12 at 08:56

5

You need to use anonymously function for that:

setTimeout(function() { console.log('delayed hello world') }, 10000);

See more about passing params to setTimeout function at MDN

answered May 11 '12 at 08:56

antyrat

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '12 at 08:57

4

You are running console.log (because you have () on the end of it) and passing its return value to setTimeout instead of passing a function.

var myFunction = function () { console.log('delayed hello world'); }
setTimeout(myFunction, 10000);

answered May 11 '12 at 08:57

Quentin

2 Answers2