749515 - a setTimeout or setInterval using console.log fails unexpectedly and cryptically

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Console, defect)

Description

[mrmr1993]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
Build ID: 20120420145725

Steps to reproduce:

setTimeout(console.log,0)
setInterval(console.log,0)
setTimeout(console.log,...) // seems to happen regardless of arguments
setInterval(console.log,...) // seems to happen regardless of arguments

The latter two cases can include additional arguments beyond the delay; this seems not to make any difference to the outcome.


Actual results:

For each example, the console displayed:
uncaught exception: TypeError: frame is undefined

This message was marked as displayed multiple times in the console for setInterval, as one would expect.


Expected results:

Ideally:
The first case should have printed a blank line to the console.
The second case should have printed the same as the third, but repeatedly.
The third case should have printed all arguments including and after the 3rd, joined by spaces, at the interval declared in the second argument.
The fourth case should have printed the same as the third, but repeatedly.

However, due to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749489, more consistent behaviour would be for the examples respectively to perform as do:

setTimeout(function(){console.log.apply(this,arguments)},0)
setInterval(function(){console.log.apply(this,arguments)},0)
setTimeout(function(){console.log.apply(this,arguments)},...)
setInterval(function(){console.log.apply(this,arguments)},...)

Comment 1

[mrmr1993]

In fact, replacing log with any of the console functions from https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/console#Methods appears to give an identical error.

Comment 2

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Today these throw the error: "TypeError: 'log' called on an object that does not implement interface Console."  Which matches behavior in other browsers, although the spec is currently being discussed further here: https://github.com/whatwg/console/issues/3.