Question

I’ve got two arrays which are updating themselves and each other based on criteria (it is way longer to describe than I suspect the solution is).

What I end up with is a function which calls itself within a while loop. As you can imagine, this causes a ridiculous amount of recursion.

Here’s an example (keeping it short)

var buildArray=firstFunction(new Array(), existingArray)

function firstFunction(thisArray, existingArray){
     for(test1=0; test1<existingArray.length; test1++){
         if(existingArray[test1][3]=='2'){
           secondFunction(thisArray, existingArray, test1);
        }
     }

function secondFunction(thisArray, existingArray, t1){
       for(test2=0; test2<thisArray.length; test2++){
          if(thisArray[test1]<=existingArray[test2][1] || thisArray[test1]>existingArray[test2[0]){
            // do a bunch of stuff to existingArray, now that existingArray has changed, the whole process needs to start again FROM THE BEGINNING!!!
     return firstFunction(new Array(), existingArray);

              // check that the value isn't already in the 'thisArray'
   var check= new Array(existingArray[test1]);
  else if (jQuery.inArray(check, thisArray==-1){
         // value isn't in the new array, so add it
        thisArray.push(check);
       // thisArray has changed. need to restart the the second function
       secondFunction(thisArray,existingArray);
     }

   }
 }

}
}

I was hoping that

return secondFunction(thisArray, existingArray);

would reset and restart the function, but apparently that isn’t happening.

Is there a way to stop the current function and loops and restart with the updated variables?

Answer 1

i do not get what you are trying yo do, however based on the fact that return stop the execution in the secondFunction, and thisArray is never changed,
you can add a loop to the firstFunction:

function firstFunction(thisArray, existingArray){
    var restart = true;
    while(restart)
    {
        restart = false;
         for(test1=0; !restart && test1<existingArray.length; test1++){
             if(existingArray[test1][3]=='2'){
               if(secondFunction(thisArray, existingArray, test1))
               {
                restart = true;
               }
            }
         }
    }

and in the secondFunction instead of returning the array return true:

  if(thisArray[test1]<=existingArray[test2][1] || thisArray[test1]>existingArray[test2[0]){
    // do a bunch of stuff to existingArray, now that existingArray has changed, the whole process needs to start again FROM THE BEGINNING!!!
 return true;