Break/Continue

Relax. We'll talk through this in plain words — no textbook voice.

break stops a loop entirely, while continue skips the current round and moves straight to the next one. They're commonly used for things like stopping as soon as you find what you're looking for in search results, or skipping over invalid items.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if (i == 4) {
      continue;
    }
    if (i == 8) {
      break;
    }
    printf("%d ", i);
  }
  return 0;
}

i == 4 is true, continue skips the print for that round. i == 8 is true, break stops the loop.

You should see

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Info

continue and break too much and your loop logic can get hard to follow. If you do use them, write clear conditions.

Easy traps

Inside nested loops, break only stops the innermost loop. If you want to stop all the loops, you'll need to set up separate logic for that.