How to stop a setTimeout loop?

setTimeout returns a timer handle, which you can use to stop the timeout with clearTimeout.

So for instance:

function setBgPosition() {
    var c = 0,
        timer = 0;
    var numbers = [0, -120, -240, -360, -480, -600, -720];
    function run() {
        Ext.get('common-spinner').setStyle('background-position', numbers[c++] + 'px 0px');
        if (c >= numbers.length) {
            c = 0;
        }
        timer = setTimeout(run, 200);
    }
    timer = setTimeout(run, 200);

    return stop;

    function stop() {
        if (timer) {
            clearTimeout(timer);
            timer = 0;
        }
}

So you’d use that as:

var stop = setBgPosition();
// ...later, when you're ready to stop...
stop();

Note that rather than having setBgPosition call itself again, I’ve just had it set c back to 0. Otherwise, this wouldn’t work. Also note that I’ve used 0 as a handle value for when the timeout isn’t pending; 0 isn’t a valid return value from setTimeout so it makes a handy flag.

This is also one of the (few) places I think you’d be better off with setInterval rather than setTimeout. setInterval repeats. So:

function setBgPosition() {
    var c = 0;
    var numbers = [0, -120, -240, -360, -480, -600, -720];
    function run() {
        Ext.get('common-spinner').setStyle('background-position', numbers[c++] + 'px 0px');
        if (c >= numbers.length) {
            c = 0;
        }
    }
    return setInterval(run, 200);
}

Used like this:

var timer = setBgPosition();
// ...later, when you're ready to stop...
clearInterval(timer);

All of the above notwithstanding, I’d want to find a way to make setBgPosition stop things itself, by detecting that some completion condition has been satisfied.