How to Exit JavaScript Function

1. Use return to Exit a Function in JavaScript
2. Use break to Exit a Function in JavaScript
3. Use try...catch to Exit a Function in JavaScript

This tutorial explains how we can exit early from a function in JavaScript.

We often come across situations where we want to exit early from a function, like when a specific condition is satisfied. But JavaScript does not have an explicit function like other programming languages such as C++, PHP, etc. Different methods help us to exit early from a function.

There are three major ways that JavaScript explicitly provides us to exit a function early from its natural flow, namely return, break and try and catch.

Use return to Exit a Function in JavaScript

We can exit a function by using the return statement when a specific condition is met. We can exit a function by using the return statement alone or return a value from the function.

function divide(a, b) {
  if (b == 0) {
    return 'invalid b';
  } else
    return a / b;
}

console.log(divide(5, 2));
console.log(divide(5, 0));

Output:

2.5
invalid b

In this function, we first check if b is 0 to rule out the case of invalid division because dividing a number by 0 returns infinity, so we exit the function early by returning a string declaring that the value of b is invalid. The statement performing division of a and b is never executed.

Use break to Exit a Function in JavaScript

The break is traditionally used to exit from a for loop, but it can be used to exit from a function by using labels within the function.

const logIN = () => {
  logIN: {console.log('I get logged in'); break logIN;
          // nothing after this gets executed
          console.log('I don\'t get logged in');}
};
logIN();

Output:

I get logged in

Here, we use the label logIN and then break out of the label to exit the function earlier.

Use try...catch to Exit a Function in JavaScript

We can use the try...catch block to exit the function early by throwing an exception.

function myFunc() {
  var a = 100;
  try {
    if (typeof (a) != 'string') throw (a + ' is not a string');
  } catch (e) {
    alert('Error: ' + e);
  }

  a++;
  return a;
}
myFunc();

Output:

Error: 100 is not a string

We throw an exception to break out the normal flow, and the catch block catches this exception, and then we exit the function leaving all other statements unexecuted.

All the major browsers support all these three ways.