Finding how many time a specific letter is appearing in the sentence using for loop, break, and continue - JavaScript

We are required to write a JavaScript function that finds how many times a specific letter is appearing in the sentence using for loop, break, and continue statements.

Using continue Statement

The continue statement skips the current iteration and moves to the next one. Here's how we can use it to count character occurrences:

const string = 'This is just an example string for the program';
const countAppearances = (str, char) => {
    let count = 0;
    for(let i = 0; i < str.length; i++){
        if(str[i] !== char){
            // using continue to move to next iteration
            continue;
        };
        // if we reached here it means that str[i] and char are same
        // so we increase the count
        count++;
    };
    return count;
};
console.log(countAppearances(string, 'a'));
console.log(countAppearances(string, 'e'));
console.log(countAppearances(string, 's'));

3
3
4

Using break Statement for Early Exit

We can also use break to exit the loop early once we find a certain number of occurrences:

const findFirstNOccurrences = (str, char, maxCount) => {
    let count = 0;
    for(let i = 0; i < str.length; i++){
        if(str[i] === char){
            count++;
            console.log(`Found '${char}' at position ${i}`);
            if(count >= maxCount){
                // using break to exit loop early
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return count;
};

const testString = 'programming example';
console.log(`Total found: ${findFirstNOccurrences(testString, 'r', 2)}`);

Found 'r' at position 1
Found 'r' at position 4
Total found: 2

Alternative Approach Without continue

For comparison, here's a simpler approach without using continue:

const countLetterSimple = (str, char) => {
    let count = 0;
    for(let i = 0; i < str.length; i++){
        if(str[i] === char){
            count++;
        }
    }
    return count;
};

const text = 'JavaScript programming';
console.log(`Letter 'a': ${countLetterSimple(text, 'a')}`);
console.log(`Letter 'r': ${countLetterSimple(text, 'r')}`);

Letter 'a': 3
Letter 'r': 4

Comparison

Conclusion

While continue and break provide flow control options, the simple approach is often more readable. Use continue for complex skip conditions and break for early termination scenarios.