how to stop Javascript forEach?

Breaking out of Array#forEach is not possible. (You can inspect the source code that implements it in Firefox on the linked page, to confirm this.)

Instead you should use a normal for loop:

function recurs(comment) {
    for (var i = 0; i < comment.comments.length; ++i) {
        var subComment = comment.comments[i];
        recurs(subComment);
        if (...) {
            break;
        }
    }
}

(or, if you want to be a little more clever about it and comment.comments[i] is always an object:)

function recurs(comment) {
    for (var i = 0, subComment; subComment = comment.comments[i]; ++i) {
        recurs(subComment);
        if (...) {
            break;
        }
    }
}

You can't break from a forEach. I can think of three ways to fake it, though.

1. The Ugly Way: pass a second argument to forEach to use as context, and store a boolean in there, then use an if. This looks awful.

2. The Controversial Way: surround the whole thing in a try-catch block and throw an exception when you want to break. This looks pretty bad and may affect performance, but can be encapsulated.

3. The Fun Way: use every().

['a', 'b', 'c'].every(function(element, index) {
  // Do your thing, then:
  if (you_want_to_break) return false
  else return true
})

You can use some() instead, if you'd rather return true to break.


forEach does not break on return, there are ugly solutions to get this work but I suggest not to use it, instead try to use Array.prototype.some or Array.prototype.every

var ar = [1,2,3,4,5];

ar.some(function(item,index){
  if(item == 3){
     return true;
  }
  console.log("item is :"+item+" index is : "+index);
});