In the book Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford, this is all the author has to say about the continue Statement:
The
continue
statement jumps to the top of the loop. I have never seen a piece of code that was not improved by refactoring it to remove thecontinue
statement.
This really confuses me. I know Crockford has some very opinionated views on JavaScript, but this just sounds entirely wrong to me.
First of all, continue
does more than just jump to the top of a loop. By default, it also progresses to the next iteration. So isn't Crockford's statement just completely false information?
More importantly, I do not entirely understand why continue
would even be considered to be bad. This post provides what seems to be the general assumption:
Why is continue inside a loop a bad idea?
Although I understand how continue
may make code difficult to read in certain instances, I think it is just as likely that it can make code more readable. For instance:
var someArray=['blah',5,'stuff',7];
for(var i=0;i<someArray.length;i++){
if(typeof someArray[i]==='number'){
for(var j=0;j<someArray[i];j++){
console.log(j);
}
}
}
This could be refactored into:
var someArray=['blah',5,'stuff',7];
for(var i=0;i<someArray.length;i++){
if(typeof someArray[i]!=='number'){
continue;
}
for(var j=0;j<someArray[i];j++){
console.log(j);
}
}
continue
isn't particularly beneficial in this specific example, but it does demonstrate the fact that it reduces the nesting depth. In more complex code, this could potentially increase readability.
Crockford provides no explanation as to why continue
should not be used, so is there some deeper significance behind this opinion that I am missing?