I want to share a snippet (based on answer by Soufiane Hassou). It extends to the case when you literally replace a for-loop body to be iterated over some array in a fixed interval of time. Basically same synchronous loop but with "sleep" pausing (because javascript is not a synchronous programming language).
function loop(arr, take, period) {
period = period || 1000;
var i = 0;
var interval = setInterval(function() {
take(i, arr[i]);
if (++i >= arr.length) { clearInterval(interval);}
}, period);
}
Usage example:
loop([1, 2, 3, 4], function(index, elem){
console.log('arr[' + index + ']: ' + elem);
});
Tested in Node JS. Hope that helps someone.
edit>
the following update makes code usable together with libs doing heavy "prototyping" (like jQuery or prototype):
function loop(arr, take, period) {
period = period || 1000;
var scope = {
i: 0,
arr: arr,
take: take,
};
var iterate = (function iterate() {
if (this.i >= this.arr.length) { clearInterval(this.interval); return}
take(this.i, this.arr[this.i++]);
}).bind(scope);
scope.interval = setInterval(iterate, period);
}