Is there an idiomatic way to prevent recursive function calls in JavaScript?

Question

Say I have some complicated function that, through subsequent nested function calls, can potentially call itself, is there an accepted method to prevent this recursive call in the case where it is undesirable?

e.g.:

function h()
{
  if(someOtherState)
    f(); // uh-oh
}

function g()
{
  if(someState)
    h();
}

function f()
{
  g();
}

No chance refactoring out the circular dependency is an option, right? — D M
– D M, Commented Jul 11, 2022 at 13:56
Yeah, assume that's more complicated/impossible/time consuming than it's worth, versus just dealing with it post-hoc. — Tim Angus
– Tim Angus, Commented Jul 11, 2022 at 14:00

Tim Angus · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-11 13:53:41Z

1

Invoking Cunningham's Law here (I am not really a JS developer), a way I've found that works is:

function f()
{
  if(f.inFunction)
    return;

  f.inFunction = true;
  // Some complicated/non-deterministic code that may call f() again
  f.inFunction = false;
}

answered Jul 11, 2022 at 13:53

Tim Angus

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3 Comments

Pointy Over a year ago

Probably a good idea to wrap that in try/catch/finally so that the switch isn't inadvertently left true.

Pointy Over a year ago

Also, if the code is written to expect that a recursive call will actually do something, I'm not sure how this helps. It might be better to throw an exception and move the test that realizes the code is in an invalid state closer to the origin.

Tim Angus Over a year ago

Ah good point with the exception catching...

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