Question

So I am just wondering why the following code dosen’t work. I am looking for a similar strategy to put the for loop in a variable.

var whatever = for (i=1;i<6;i++) {
console.log(i)
};

Thanks!

Answer 1

Because a for loop is a statement and in JavaScript statements don’t have values. It’s simply not something provided for in the syntax and semantics of the language.

In some languages, every statement is treated as an expression (Erlang for example). In others, that’s not the case. JavaScript is in the latter category.

It’s kind-of like asking why horses have long stringy tails and no wings.

edit — look into things like the Underscore library or the “modern” add-ons to the Array prototype for “map” and “reduce” and “forEach” functionality. Those allow iterative operations in an expression evaluation context (at a cost, of course).