How to cancel a debounced function after it is called and before it executes?

If you use the last version of lodash you can simply do:

// create debounce
const debouncedThing = _.debounce(thing, 1000);

// execute debounce, it will wait one second before executing thing
debouncedThing();

// will cancel the execution of thing if executed before 1 second
debouncedThing.cancel()

Another solution is with a flag:

// create the flag
let executeThing = true;

const thing = () => {
   // use flag to allow execution cancelling
   if (!executeThing) return false;
   ...
};

// create debounce
const debouncedThing = _.debounce(thing, 1000);

// execute debounce, it will wait one second before executing thing
debouncedThing();

// it will prevent to execute thing content
executeThing = false;