Early return

Using the `if` statement is a common technique to deal with conditional logics. The code flow is split into different branches based on a given logic.

Let's take a look at a simple function that suffixes a given hour number with am or pm. The suffix is determined based on which range the hour belongs to as you can see in the following table:

Hour	With suffix
0	12am
1 - 11	1am - 11am
12	12pm
13 - 23	1pm - 11pm

An initial implementation of the function could look like:

const suffixAmPm = (hour) => {
    if (hour === 0) {
        return '12am';
    } else {
        if (hour < 12) {
            return `${hour}am`;
        } else {
            if (hour === 12) {
                return '12pm';
            } else {
                return `${hour % 12}pm`;
            }
        }
    }
};

Imagine how the code looks like if we use multiple nested `if` statements. It's very hard to follow and maintain. Rather than using `else` or nested `if` statements, the function can return as soon as the condition matches:

const fn = (args) => {
    if (condition) {
        return 'foo';
    } else {
        // Long implementation
        return 'bar';
    }
};

// Better
const fn = (args) => {
    if (condition) {
        return 'foo';
    }

    // Long implementation
    // Don't need to wrap within an `else`
    return 'bar';
};

Using this practice, a new version of the `suffixAmPm` function looks like:

const suffixAmPm = (hour) => {
    if (hour === 0) {
        return '12am';
    }

    if (hour < 12) {
        return `${hour}am`;
    }

    if (hour === 12) {
        return '12pm';
    }

    return `${hour % 12}pm`;
};

Early return

See also