How can I skip the first iteration in a forEach loop? I've got my forEach loop working as expected but I need to start on the second item totally ignoring the first item. I'm using ES6.

cars.forEach(car => {...do something});

I thought I could maybe do something like

cars.skip(1).forEach(car => {...do something});

How can I skip the first iteration in a forEach loop? I've got my forEach loop working as expected but I need to start on the second item totally ignoring the first item. I'm using ES6.

cars.forEach(car => {...do something});

I thought I could maybe do something like

cars.skip(1).forEach(car => {...do something});

• javascript
• node.js
• ecmascript-6
• foreach

• 3 You could use slice: w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_slice_array.asp – Johan Maes Commented Aug 14, 2020 at 5:29
• I got it! Thank you, set as new object before then use that for my input into the loop. Thanks again – luke jon Commented Aug 14, 2020 at 5:35
• Just use a regular for loop and start the index at 1 instead of 0. .forEach() is so yesterday. – jfriend00 Commented Aug 14, 2020 at 8:42

6 Answers 6

you need to check index, and use return on that value, what you need. In your case you need to skip zero index (0), here is code

const cars = ['audi', 'bmw', 'maybach']

cars.forEach((car, index) => {
  if (index === 0) return;
  console.log(car)
});

this code will show 'bmw' and 'maybach'

Writing out my comment as an answer:

cars.slice(1).forEach(car => { do something });

MDN reference to slice method: https://developer.mozilla.org/nl/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/slice

Should be a fairly simple one-item test - your 'do something' function can set/read an external variable as required.

let myArray = [1,2,3,4,5];

let firstItem = true;
myArray.forEach(item => {
  if (firstItem != true){
    console.log(item);
  } else {
    firstItem = false;
  }
});

since there is counting variable available in forEach loop, you manually make one to count it.

let count = 0;
let skipVal = 0;
cars.forEach(car => {
count++;
if (count != skipVal){
...do something
}
});

How about a sliced for loop?

const s=['car','bike','plane']
for(each of s.slice(1))console.log(each)

As of ECMAScript 2025, you can call drop on an iterable, so you can now do:

const cars = ["Honda", "Mercedez", "Tesla", "Peugeot"];

cars.values().drop(1).forEach(car => console.log(car));