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 stops the 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);
}

Visualize break vs. continue

Choose break or continue below to see what happens in each round of the loop:

Combining Break and Continue

You can also combine break and continue.

This example skips printing 2 and stops the loop at 4:

int i;

for (i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
  if (i == 2) {
    continue;
  }
  if (i == 4) {
    break;
  }
  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++;
}

Real-Life Example

Imagine processing a list of numbers where you want to skip negative values, but stop completely if you find a zero:

int myNumbers[] = {3, -1, 7, 0, 9};
int length = sizeof(myNumbers) / sizeof(myNumbers[0]);
int i;

for (i = 0; i < length; i++) {
  if (myNumbers[i] < 0) {
    continue; // skip negative numbers
  }
  if (myNumbers[i] == 0) {
    break; // stop loop when zero is found
  }
  printf("%d\n", myNumbers[i]);
}