SyntaxError: for-in loop head declarations may not have initializers
The JavaScript strict mode-only exception
"for-in loop head declarations may not have initializers"
occurs when the head of a for...in contains
an initializer expression, such as for (var i = 0 in obj)
. This is not
allowed in for-in loops in strict mode. In addition, lexical declarations with initializers like for (const i = 0 in obj)
are not allowed outside strict mode either.
Message
SyntaxError: for-in loop variable declaration may not have an initializer. (V8-based) SyntaxError: for-in loop head declarations may not have initializers (Firefox) SyntaxError: a lexical declaration in the head of a for-in loop can't have an initializer (Firefox) SyntaxError: Cannot assign to the loop variable inside a for-in loop header. (Safari)
Error type
What went wrong?
The head of a for...in loop contains an initializer expression.
That is, a variable is declared and assigned a value for (var i = 0 in obj)
.
In non-strict mode, this head declaration is silently ignored and behaves like for (var i in obj)
.
In strict mode, however, a SyntaxError
is thrown. In addition, lexical declarations with initializers like for (const i = 0 in obj)
are not allowed outside strict mode either, and will always produce a SyntaxError
.
Examples
This example throws a SyntaxError
:
js
const obj = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };
for (const i = 0 in obj) {
console.log(obj[i]);
}
// SyntaxError: for-in loop head declarations may not have initializers
Valid for-in loop
You can remove the initializer (i = 0
) in the head of the for-in loop.
js
const obj = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };
for (const i in obj) {
console.log(obj[i]);
}
Array iteration
The for...in loop shouldn't be used for Array iteration.
Did you intend to use a for
loop
instead of a for-in
loop to iterate an Array
? The
for
loop allows you to set an initializer then as well:
js
const arr = ["a", "b", "c"];
for (let i = 2; i < arr.length; i++) {
console.log(arr[i]);
}
// "c"