What is the difference between .map, .every, and .forEach?

The difference is in the return values.

.map() returns a new Array of objects created by taking some action on the original item.

.every() returns a boolean - true if every element in this array satisfies the provided testing function. An important difference with .every() is that the test function may not always be called for every element in the array. Once the testing function returns false for any element, no more array elements are iterated. Therefore, the testing function should usually have no side effects.

.forEach() returns nothing - It iterates the Array performing a given action for each item in the Array.

Read about these and the many other Array iteration methods at MDN.

gilly3's answer is great. I just wanted to add a bit of information about other types of "loop through elements" functions.

• .every() (stops looping the first time the iterator returns false orsomething falsey)
• .some() (stops looping the first time the iteratorreturns true or something truthy)
• .filter() (creates a new arrayincluding elements where the filter function returns true andomitting the ones where it returns false)
• .map() (creates a new array from the values returned by the iteratorfunction)
• .reduce() (builds up a value by repeated calling the iterator,passing in previous values; see the spec for the details; usefulfor summing the contents of an array and many other things)
• .reduceRight() (like reduce, but works in descending rather thanascending order)

credit to: T.J.Crowder For-each over an array in JavaScript?

Another consideration to the above great answers is chaining. With forEach() you can't chain, but with map(), you can.

For example:

var arrayNumbers = [3,1,2,4,5];arrayNumbers.map(function(i) {    return i * 2}).sort();

with .forEach(), you can't do the .sort(), you'll get an error.