JavaScript While-Loop not Working

Question

I was trying to make a text adventure game when I encountered many problems. This was expected since I am fairly new to JavaScript, as well as coding in general. One of the problems I encountered was one where I added some code to prevent the possibility of someone not choosing something. No matter what input I gave the prompt window, it just became unresponsive.

Here's the code that I think is responsible:

var weapon = prompt("(prompt text)");
while (weapon != "axe" || weapon != "bow and arrow" || weapon != "rubber chicken"); {
 alert("That's not an option!");
 weapon = prompt("(prompt text)");
}

Answer 1

while (weapon != "axe" ... weapon != "rubber chicken");

The main problem is the ; at the end. It says the while loop has only one statement and ; is that statement. It is similar to doing

while (weapon != "axe" ... weapon != "rubber chicken") {
 ;
}

Just remove that ;, you should be fine.

Note: Since you want to allow only those three values, the condition should have been with the && operator

while (weapon != "axe" && ... && weapon != "rubber chicken") {
 ...
}

When you use || operator, if I input weapon as rubber chicken, since it doesn't match axe the condition will be satisfied and you will be asking the same question again and again. When you use && operator, it will be truthy only when the value is not equal to all the three values you are comparing.