Using await outside of an async function

Question

I was attempting to chain two async functions together, because the first had a conditional return parameter that caused the second to either run, or exit the module. However, I've found odd behavior I can't find in the specs.

async function isInLobby() {     //promise.all([chained methods here])     let exit = false;     if (someCondition) exit = true; } 

This is a bastardized snippet of my code (you can see the full scope here), that simply checks if a player if already in a lobby, but that's irrelevant.

Next we have this async function.

async function countPlayer() {     const keyLength = await scardAsync(game);     return keyLength; } 

This function doesn't need to run if exit === true.

I tried to do

const inLobby = await isInLobby(); 

This I hoped would await to results, so I can use inLobby to conditionally run countPlayer, however I received a typeerror with no specific details.

Why can't you await an async function outside of the scope of the function? I know it's a sugar promise, so it must be chained to then but why is it that in countPlayer I can await another promise, but outside, I can't await isInLobby?

Answer 1

There is always this of course:

(async () => {     await ...      // all of the script....   })(); // nothing else 

This makes a quick function with async where you can use await. It saves you the need to make an async function which is great! //credits Silve2611