C Break and Continue

Break

You have already seen the break statement used in an earlier chapter of this tutorial. It was used to “jump out” of a switch statement.

The break statement can also be used to jump out of a loop.

This example jumps out of the for loop when i is equal to 4 :

int i;

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  if (i == 4) {
    break;
  }
  printf("%d\n", i);
}

Continue

The continue statement breaks one iteration (in the loop), if a specified condition occurs, and continues with the next iteration in the loop.

This example skips the value of 4:

int i;

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  if (i == 4) {
    continue;
  }
  printf("%d\n", i);
}

Break and Continue in While Loop

You can also use break and continue in while loops:

int i = 0;

while (i < 10) {
  if (i == 4) {
    break;
  }
  printf("%d\n", i);
  i++;
}

int i = 0;

while (i < 10) {
  if (i == 4) {
    i++;
    continue;
  }
  printf("%d\n", i);
  i++;
}