C.19. break and continue Statements

In addition to selection and repetition statements, Java provides statements break and continue to alter the flow of control. The preceding section showed how break can be used to terminate a switch statement’s execution. This section discusses how to use break in repetition statements.

break Statement

The break statement, when executed in a while, for, do...while or switch, causes immediate exit from that statement. Execution continues with the first statement after the control statement. Common uses of the break statement are to escape early from a loop or to skip the remainder of a switch.

continue Statement

The continue statement, when executed in a while, for or do...while, skips the remaining statements in the loop body and proceeds with the next iteration of the loop. In while and do...while statements, the program evaluates the loop-continuation test immediately after the continue statement executes. In a for statement, the increment expression executes, then the program evaluates the loop-continuation test.