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JAVASCRIPT - BREAK

Break as the name suggests, is used to break out of a loop(i.e. for loop or while loop) before its execution is complete.

To make it a little simpler, let us take the below example.

Break with while loop

Say you have a while loop that is used to document.write the numbers from 1 to 6.

Example :

<html>
<body>  
<script language = "javascript" type = "text/javascript">
		
	var x = 1 
	while (x <= 6) {
		document.write(x, ", ")           
		x++
    }   
    
</script>      
</body>
</html>

Output :

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

But let us say, you want to break out of the while loop, if the value of x is 4. i.e. You want to get out of the loop, right after printing 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And we can achieve it using break statement.

Let us modify the above program using the break statement.

Example :

<html>
<body>  
<script language = "javascript" type = "text/javascript">
		
	var x = 1 
	while (x <= 6) {
		document.write(x, ", ")
		if (x == 4) {
			break
		}            
		x++
    }   
    
</script>      
</body>
</html>

Output :

1, 2, 3, 4,

And all we have done is placed an if condition, right after the document.write statement, checking if the value of x is equal to 4. If so we break out of the loop.

if (x == 4) {
	break
}

And the break statement helps to get out of the while loop.

Let us see another example of break using the for loop.

Break with for loop

Say we have a for loop that prints all the letters of a String (i.e. Hello World).

Example :

<html>
<body>  
<script language = "javascript" type = "text/javascript">
		
	for (x of "Hello World") {
		document.write(x, ", ") 
	}        
    
</script>      
</body>
</html>

Output :

H, e, l, l, o, , W, o, r, l, d,

But let's say, we just want to document.write Hello. And omit the World.

And as we can see that Hello World is separated by a space (i.e. ' ').

Let us rewrite the program using break statement.

Example :

<html>
<body>  
<script language = "javascript" type = "text/javascript">
		
	for (x of "Hello World") {
    		if (x == ' ') {
				break;
            }    
		document.write(x, ", ") 
	}        
    
</script>      
</body>
</html>

Output :

H, e, l, l, o,

And what we have done is, checked if the value of x is a white space (i.e. ' '). Because Hello World is separated by a space (i.e. ' ').

if (x == ' ') {
	break;
}

And came out of the for loop with the break statement, printing just Hello.

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