Maybe this is a dumb question but is there a way to return to the top of a loop?
Example:
for(var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
if(i == 3)
return;
alert(i);
}
What you'd expect in other languages is that the alert would trigger 4 times like so:
alert(0); alert(1); alert(2); alert(4);
but instead, the function is exited immediately when i is 3. What gives?
Use continue instead of return.
Example: http://jsfiddle.net/TYLgJ/
for(var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
if(i == 3)
continue;
alert(i);
}
If you wanted to completely halt the loop at that point, you would use break instead of return. The return statement is used to return a value from a function that is being executed.
EDIT: Documentation links provided by @epascarello the comments below.
continue: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/continuereturn: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/return
For what it's worth, you can also label them:
OUTER_LOOP: for (var o = 0; o < 3; o++) {
INNER_LOOP: for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
if (o && i) {
continue OUTER_LOOP;
}
console.info(o, ':', i);
}
}
outputs:
0 : 0
0 : 1
0 : 2
1 : 0
2 : 0
