Question

Am I correct in assuming that when the first if statement and nested if within the else statement both fail, I then go back up to the first for loop and increment i by 1?

So I can continue until j < totalCols fails even though neither the if or else statement are executing?

var rowCount = [];
for (var i = 0; i < totalRows; i++) {
   rowCount[i]="";
   spaceCount = 0;

   for (var j = 0; j < totalCols; j++) {
      if (puzzle[i][j] == "#") { // if this fails?
         spaceCount++;
         if (j == totalCols-1) rowCount[i] += spaceCount + "&nbsp;&nbsp;"; 
      } else {
         if (spaceCount > 0) { //and this fails?
            rowCount[i] += spaceCount + "&nbsp;&nbsp;";
            spaceCount = 0;
         } 
      }    
   }

}

Answer 1

No, if either of those if statements fails, you are still in the inner loop that is incrementing j. In order to get out of the inner loop you need to use the break statement.