Useful JavaScript Extensions: Number#times

Part 5/256

For loops… I hate them so much. Fortunately, a well established functional iteration convention is the Number#times method.

/**
 * Calls iterator the specified number of times, passing in a number of the
 * current iteration as a parameter. The number will be 0 on first call, 1 on
 * second call, etc.
 *
 * @param {Function} iterator The iterator takes a single parameter, the number
 * of the current iteration.
 * @param {Object} [context] The optional context parameter specifies an object
 * to treat as this in the iterator block.
 *
 * @returns The number of times the iterator was called.
 */
Number.prototype.times = function(iterator, context) {
  for(var i = 0; i < this; i++) {
    iterator.call(context, i);
  }
  return i;
}

This hides the inner workings of the iteration from the calling code so there’s no need to keep track of an external dummy iterator variable if you don’t want to.

var n = 3;

// Greets you three times, with respect
n.times(function() {
  alert("O HAI!");
});

// logs: 0, 1, 2
n.times(function(i) {
  console.log(i);
});

Author: Daniel X

Heretic priest of the Machine God. I enjoy crawling around in Jeff Bezo's spaceship, bringing technology to the people, and long walks outside of time and space. View all posts by Daniel X