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title: The Dark Side of 'Foreach()' : Why You Should Think...
description: Learn about the limitations of forEach() function in JavaScript, including performance issues, inability to escape the loop, and incompatibility with async...
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# The Dark Side of 'Foreach()' : Why You Should Think Twice Before Using It

**[Community Picks](https://daily.dev/sources/community)** · 16 min read · 453 upvotes · 44 comments

## Summary

Learn about the limitations of forEach() function in JavaScript, including performance issues, inability to escape the loop, and incompatibility with async functions. Discover better options for working with arrays, such as map(), reduce(), and filter().

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://community.appsmith.com/content/blog/dark-side-foreach-why-you-should-think-twice-using-it>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@husseincode** · 8 upvotes

> You can use break and countinue statement in forEach method
>
> To use continue statement in a forEach method :
> You can use return statement to skip the current iteration.
>
> Exaple:-
>
> const nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
>
> nums.forEach( num =>  {
>
>     if (num === 3) {
>      return;
> }
>
> })
>
> Output is [1, 2, 4, 5];
>
>
> If you want to use break statement in a forEach method .
> simply throw an error to break the loop
>
> try {
>
> const nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
>
> nums.forEach( num =>  {
>
>     if (num === 3) {
>      throw new Error();
> }
>
> })
>
> } catch(err) {
>     console.log(err);
> }
>
> Output is [1, 2];

**@arthurdurand** · 3 upvotes

> note: js performance optimizations like this rarely matter in frontend code, because you will rarely have to do something computationally heavy.
>
> never ignore readability of code when considering performance

**@davidhida** · 2 upvotes

> As beginner we don't think about using JS array native function and all the time we go with forEach loop method because it very handy and simple to use. But this article makes me think that I was right to use native array function except use forEach loop for very small set of data. I've loved this post. thanks for sharign, hope we'll get another helpful post like this one.

**@dilnawazkhan** · 1 upvotes

> Very well explained 🫶

**@leledallas** · 1 upvotes

> Nice post!
> I'll try to update my application with those advices, thank you!

---

Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-dark-side-of-foreach-why-you-should-think-twice-before-using-it-slhsbmoyn)

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