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Count how many times a function has been called

Written byPhuoc Nguyen
Category
Tip
Tags
JavaScript
Created
27 Sep, 2022
If you want to count how many times a function has been called, you probably think of a global variable:
let counter = 0;

const expensiveFunctionToDebug = () => {
counter++;
console.log(`This function has been called: ${counter}`);

// Function body ...
};
We simply increase the counter by 1 and log the latest value whenever the `expensiveFunctionToDebug` function is invoked. `console` has a great method to do the same thing:
const expensiveFunctionToDebug = () => {
console.count('expensiveFunctionToDebug');

// Function body ...
};
In the Console tab of browsers, you will see something as following:
expensiveFunctionToDebug: 1
expensiveFunctionToDebug: 2
...
expensiveFunctionToDebug: 10
The `console.count` function prints the label you pass to it followed by the number of times the function is executed.

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Phước Nguyễn