ms: Tiny Millisecond Module by Guillermo Rauch

This code snippet is now available with a GitHub repository: https://github.com/guille/ms.js

I wanted to pass along a simple but useful module that was posted as a Gist to GitHub by Guillermo Rauch.  This simple module, available via NPM as ms, provides a simple function for turning a human-readable string into milliseconds.

// Created by milliseconds

/**

# ms.js

No more painful `setTimeout(fn, 60 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 * Infinity * NaN * '☃')`.

    ms('2d')      // 172800000
    ms('1.5h')    // 5400000
    ms('1h')      // 3600000
    ms('1m')      // 60000
    ms('5s')      // 5000
    ms('500ms')   // 500
    ms('100')     // 100
    ms(100)       // 100

**/

(function (g) {
  var r = /(\d*.?\d+)([mshd]+)/
    , _ = {}

  _.ms = 1;
  _.s = 1000;
  _.m = _.s * 60;
  _.h = _.m * 60;
  _.d = _.h * 24;

  function ms (s) {
    if (s == Number(s)) return Number(s);
    r.exec(s.toLowerCase());
    return RegExp.$1 * _[RegExp.$2];
  }

  g.top ? g.ms = ms : module.exports = ms;
})(this);

A very nice little gem by Guiller.  Keep this function handy to save yourself from math expressions for time calculations!


Comments

  1. Olmo

    Also note this has been accepted in MooTools More: https://github.com/mootools/mootools-more/pull/1098/files

  2. Ssss

    Whats with th ‘☃’ char?

    Have I missd something? xD

  3. Eric Lenhard

    Great one! Will definitely use this in my projects. Thanks a lot David!

  4. Túbal Martín

    Hi David,

    First of all, nice site, I’ve been following you for the past 2 years or so.

    Yesterday Guille created a repo so that I could fork the code and make a pull request.
    Guille merged today my pull request because it’s a better rewrite overall:
    - Smaller footprint
    - 2.8x faster
    - Passes all unit tests

    The repo is here: https://github.com/guille/ms.js

    Could you update the article? It’d be great for everyone!


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