Do something only the first time a for loop executes

Hi Dani,

There's also a way to fix your code by adding another console.log before the continue statement.

var holder = "";
for (var q = 0; q < 10; q++) {
  if(q === 0) {
    holder += "#";
    console.log(holder);
    continue;
  }
  holder += "##";
  console.log(holder);
}

Here's another way to consider writing this - the if conditional will be true for every step but the first, reducing the lines of code being evaluated. I present this just as another way to go about solving this problem - I learn a lot by reading how other developers write their code to problems I'm working on.

for (var q = 0, holder = ""; q < 10; ++q) {
  if (q > 0) {
    holder += "##";        
  } else {
    holder += "#";
  }      
  console.log(holder);
}

Good tip, Robert Richey.

I just wanted to clarify, as well, that when Dani Ivanov states:

But the if statement seems to evaluate to true every time the for statement is executed.

What am I doing wrong?

it is because an else clause is needed for further checking and also that continue needs to be removed as it is essentially cancelling out the if statement in this case.

Hi Robert Richey

Thanks for your responses. I fixed it by adding the console.log line before the continue statement. Actually that is what I was trying to do. Sometimes I make the most stupid mistakes :)

You mentioned that you are reading other developer's code to help you solve problems you are having at the moment. Do you read the whole thing or just the snippet that tackles the problem you are facing? If just the snippet, then how do you find that snippet amongst a huge file of JavaScript code?

Do you read the whole thing or just the snippet that tackles the problem you are facing? If just the snippet, then how do you find that snippet amongst a huge file of JavaScript code?

It's normally a fundamental problem that's easy to Google and read about on Stackoverflow - like looking up an error code or which for loop to use in JavaScript - for, for..each, for..in, etc. But the way some developers solve these errors or use loops are a little or a lot different than what I'm used to seeing, like whether to use a pre-increment or post-increment on your index variable when setting up a for loop; stuff like that.

After a while, it's hard to remember some differences between languages, so I stopped trying and just use Google when I need it.