What is the JavaScript version of sleep()?

Is there a better way to engineer a sleep in JavaScript than the following pausecomp function (taken from here)?

function pausecomp(millis)
{
    var date = new Date();
    var curDate = null;
    do { curDate = new Date(); }
    while(curDate-date < millis);
}

This is not a duplicate of Sleep in JavaScript - delay between actions; I want a real sleep in the middle of a function, and not a delay before a piece of code executes.

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Best Answer-推荐答案

2017 — 2021 update

Since 2009 when this question was asked, JavaScript has evolved significantly. All other answers are now obsolete or overly complicated. Here is the current best practice:

function sleep(ms) {
    return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
}

Or as a one-liner:

await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 2000));

Or

const sleep = ms => new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, ms));

Use it as:

await sleep(<duration>);

Demo: