What is the JavaScript version of sleep()?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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));
}

async function demo() {
  console.log('Taking a break...');
  await sleep(2000);
  console.log('Two seconds later, showing sleep in a loop...');

  // Sleep in loop
  for (let i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
    if (i === 3)
      await sleep(2000);
    console.log(i);
  }
}

demo();