Question

Let’s say I have this function:

function test () {

    // statements 1

    statement_X;

    // statements 2

}

I’m stepping trough the statements with the browser’s dev tools. Now, when I’m paused at “statement_X”, I would like to terminate the function execution (I don’t want the “statements 2” part of the function to be executed), as if the “statement_X” is immediately followed by a return; statement.

I know that Chrome has inline script editing, so I could manually add the return statement after the paused statement and then hit CTRL+S to re-execute the entire thing, but I need this feature for IE too, so I am hoping for a general solution.

Terminating execution early seems like an easy enough thing to do (for the browser), so I expect such a functionality from the dev tools.

Answer 1

I tested this successfully in IE 9, so I’m posting it here as an answer: while pausing at statement_X in the script debugger, hit F10 so statement_X is still executed, then right click on the last line of the enclosing function (the line with the right curly bracket } that terminates the function body), and select “Set next statement” from the drop down menu. This will skip execution until the end of the function as if there were a void return statement just after statement_X.

If there are any other statements on the last line of a function as shown in the code below, be careful to right click just on the curly bracket for this technique to work.

function test () { alert("statement 1");
    alert("statement 2"); } function test2 () { alert("statement 3"); }

This may be sometimes necessary in the case of inline functions, or in minified scripts not intended for debugging.