findFirst

findFirst is a method commonly found in programming languages and libraries that iterates through a collection of elements and returns the first element that satisfies a given condition. If no element in the collection meets the specified condition, the method typically returns a null value or a special indicator such as undefined.

The primary purpose of findFirst is to efficiently locate a specific item without needing to process the entire collection once the desired element is found. This can be particularly useful for performance in large datasets. The condition is usually provided as a function or a lambda expression that evaluates each element.

For example, in JavaScript, the `find()` array method serves this purpose. It takes a callback function as an argument. This callback is executed for each element in the array. The callback should return `true` if the element matches the desired criteria, and `false` otherwise. The `find()` method then returns the value of the first element for which the callback returns `true`. If no such element is found, it returns `undefined`.

Many other programming paradigms and data structures offer similar functionalities under names like `first_or_default` or `find_if`. The core concept remains the same: locate the initial occurrence of an element matching a defined test.