Transfer Statements

Transfer statements such as break and continue are convenience statements that provide a way to jump out of a loop or skip to the end of a loop block. Transfer statements are used to simplify complex boolean logic in loop and switch statements. Here are some simple examples:

break

It often simplifies coding a loop to be able to break out of the loop without setting variables to special values or writing complex expressions to test for many special conditions. The break statement does exactly this. In the example below the loop will terminate after the counter reaches the value 6.

counter = 0;
while (true) {     //potentially infinite loop
   if (counter > 5) break
   counter++
}

The break statement is particularly useful when you are using a for loop to search for something. If you find it, there may be no point in continuing the loop. This may be true when searching through a string, an array, or object. Here is a somewhat naive script that searches for the lowest prime factor of an number. In the example the % operator is used to see if the remainder of dividing the number by i is zero. If it is then i is a prime factor and the first time this occurs it will be the lowest prime factor. The loop starts at 2 because we are looking for factors other than 1 and the number itself. 

<html>
<head>
<title>Lowest Prime Factor</title>
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<PRE>
<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript">
<!--
//Note: This is a demonstration program that illustrates 
//      a for loop with a break statement. After the loop
//      the iterator i is used to detect if the break
//      statement was executed. A better way to do this is
//      provided in another example.

aNumber = 1001

for (i=2; i < aNumber; i++){
   if (aNumber % i == 0){
      document.writeln("The lowest prime factor for " + aNumber + " is " + i + ".")
      break
   }
}

if (i == aNumber){
   document.writeln(aNumber + " must be prime!")
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>
</PRE>
</body>
</html>

Note that in the example the first factor of 1001 is 7 (143 × 7 = 1001). So there is no point in continuing as this would mean needlessly looping through the values 8 through 1000. Of course there is always the possibility that the number 1001 was prime. If the number is prime the loop will continue with i will going through all the values less than 1001. If that happens then after the last time the loop body is executed i will be incremented and i < aNumber will not be true and the loop will be over. Unfortunately, while this illustrates how break works and what happens to i if the break statement is executed or not, it is not a good way to determine if the break statement was executed. This does not mean that it does not work but rather that it may introduce problems/bugs if the script is modified. Here is a better way that is less prone to problems.

<html>
<head>
<title>Lowest Prime Factor</title>
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<PRE>
<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript">
<!--
isPrime = true      //assume the number is prime - though we don't know yet..
aNumber = 1001      //we are looking for the lowest prime factor of this number

for (i=2; i < aNumber; i++){
   if (aNumber % i == 0){
      document.writeln("The lowest prime factor for " + aNumber + " is " + i + ".")
      isPrime = false       //if we found a prime factor it can't be prime.
      break
   }
}

if (isPrime){
   document.writeln(aNumber + " is prime!")
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>
</PRE>
</body>
</html>

In the preceding example, i is not used to determine if a prime factor was found and the loop broken out of. Instead, the variable isPrime is set to true before the loop is entered. If a prime factor is found isPrime is set to false before breaking out of the loop. If a prime factor is not found then isPrime is still true after the loop is completed. At the cost in memory of creating another variable, this makes it easier to understand what the script does and makes it easier to modify the script without intoducing bugs if the the loop is changed. For example, there is no point in testing values greater than the square root of aNumber. If the loop was modified to exit after reaching the square root of aNumber the test if (i == aNumber) or even if (i >= aNumber) would no longer work and would have to be modified. No changes would be required in the preceding example where the extra isPrime variable was used.

continue

Another statement that may simplify writing a loop allows you to skip over the remaining statements in a loop and move on to the next iteration is the continue statement.

counter = 0;
while (counter < 6) {
   counter++
   if (counter % 2 == 0) continue
   document.write("Counter is now: " + counter)
}

This is particularly useful in a for loop when processing or searching through data when it is necessary to skip over certain exceptional data elements that should not be processed. In the preceding example only odd numbers would be written into the document as the document.write statement will be skipped for even numbers.