Question

This is what I want to do: cycle through a complex data structure and if one of the elements meets some condition, return it. But I don’t think it’s possible to return from within an ‘if’ that’s within my for loop. What’s the best practice? Thanks.

function findIt(x) {
    for (i in someDataArray) {
        v = someDataArray[i];
        if (*v meets some condition*) {
            return v;
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

It’s perfectly legal to issue return statement from within an if.

The only issue here is what happens if it’s not found? Here the function will implicitly return undefined. It may be better to make this explicit. This is a matter of style though.

function findIt(x) {
    for (i in someDataArray) {
        v = someDataArray[i];
        if (*v meets some condition*) {
            return v;
        }
    }
    return undefined;
}