for...in Iterates Over Object Properties

I don't reach for for loops very often, so when I needed one recently I thought I'd check out the newer for...in construct. It didn't behave quite how I was expecting. I thought it would iterate over the values in the target list, instead it seemed to be iterating over the indices.

The MDN docs explain what is going on:

The for...in statement iterates over all non-Symbol, enumerable properties of an object.

An array is an object whose properties are the indices of the values stored in the array.

const fruits = ["apple", "banana", "orange"];
for (let fruit in fruits) {
  console.log(fruit, fruits[fruit]);
}
// => "0" "apple"
// => "1" "banana"
// => "2" "orange"

The iteration value wasn't what I was looking for, but in this case I can use it to access the value from the list. I'd be better off using a standard for loop though.

Last updated