Is JavaScript guaranteed to be single-threaded?

Question

JavaScript is known to be single-threaded in all modern browser implementations, but is that specified in any standard or is it just by tradition? Is it totally safe to assu

Answer 1

I'd say yes - because virtually all existing (at least all non-trivial) javascript code would break if a browser's javascript engine were to run it asynchronously.

Add to that the fact that HTML5 already specifies Web Workers (an explicit, standardized API for multi-threading javascript code) introducing multi-threading into the basic Javascript would be mostly pointless.

(Note to others commenters: Even though setTimeout/setInterval, HTTP-request onload events (XHR), and UI events (click, focus, etc.) provide a crude impression of multi-threadedness - they are still all executed along a single timeline - one at a time - so even if we don't know their execution order beforehand, there's no need to worry about external conditions changing during the execution of an event handler, timed function or XHR callback.)