The break and continue statements

The break and continue statements

 

Suppose that your program is in the middle of a loop and suddenly it finds its answer. This is where the beauty of the break statement becomes clear. The break will transfer control out of the loop you are in and begin executing the statements following the loop, effectively terminating the loop. This statement is very useful when you need to jump out of a loop depending on the answer of some calculation in the loop. It's also useful in the implementation of infinite loops (loops that can execute indefinitely) where control can transferred out of the loop once a certain condition is met and avoid staying in the loop forever.

On the other hand, When a continue statement is encountered, whatever was being executed at that point will be stopped and execution will be transferred to the start of the next loop pass. This might be useful to avoid a divide by zero.

This example illustrates the use of continue and break statements:

int counter;

for(counter = 0;counter < 5;counter++)

{

            if (counter == 3)

            break;

            printf("in the break loop, counter is now %dn",counter);

}

 

for(counter = 0;counter < 5;counter++)

{

            if (counter == 3)

            continue;

            printf("In the continue loop, counter is the now %dn",counter);

}

In the first "for" there is an if statement that calls a break if counter equals 3. When counter reaches 3, the loop is terminated and the last value printed will be the previous value, namely 2.

The next "for" loop, when the value of counter reaches 3 the continue statement will make the program jump to the end of the loop and continue executing the loop, effectively eliminating the printf statement during the pass through the loop when counter is 3.