no-one-iteration-loop.md

no-one-iteration-loop

A loop with at most one iteration is equivalent to the use of an if statement to conditionally execute one piece of code. No developer expects to find such a use of a loop statement. If the initial intention of the author was really to conditionally execute one piece of code, an if statement should be used instead.

At worst that was not the initial intention of the author and so the body of the loop should be fixed to use the nested return, break or throw statements in a more appropriate way.

Noncompliant Code Example

for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // noncompliant, loop only executes once
  console.log("i is " + i);
  break;
}
...
for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // noncompliant, loop only executes once
  if (i == x) {
    break;
  } else {
    console.log("i is " + i);
    return;
  }
}

Compliant Solution

for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  console.log("i is " + i);
}
...
for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  if (i == x) {
    break;
  } else {
    console.log("i is " + i);
  }
}