Calling function recursively at regular intervals

Question

So I was wondering what is a better way (in terms of stack growth and performance) to recursively call a function at regular intervals? For example, lets say I want to read file contents every 200 ms. I have the following two methods and was wondering if they are any different?

Method 1: Using plain ols setTimeout without process.nextTick

var fs = require('fs');
(function loop() {
  // Print to time to indicate something is happening
  console.log(new Date().toString());

  // Read a 51MB file
  fs.readFile('./testfile', function (err, data) {
    if (err) console.log(err);
  });

  // Call the same function again
  setTimeout(function () {
    loop();
  }, 200);
})();

Method 2: Calling process.nextTick inside setTimeout

var fs = require('fs');
(function loop() {
  // Print to time to indicate something is happening
  console.log(new Date().toString());

  // Read a 51MB file
  fs.readFile('./testfile', function (err, data) {
    if (err) console.log(err);
  });

  // Call the same function again
  setTimeout(function () {
    process.nextTick(function () {
      loop();
    });
  }, 200);
})();

What I want to know is that adding process.nextTick inside setTimeout helps or not? Will calling the function inside process.nextTick will alleviate the stack usage or not?

Answer 1

There is no recursion in the following simplified example:

function test()
{
   console.trace();
   setTimeout(test, 1000);
}

test();

output (note that stack is not growing)

Trace
    at test (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/private/tmp/rec.js:7:1)
    at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)
    at Object..js (module.js:467:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function._load (module.js:312:12)
    at module.js:487:10
    at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:238:9)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)
Trace
    at Object.test [as _onTimeout] (/private/tmp/rec.js:3:12)
    at Timer.ontimeout (timers.js:101:19)