Break and continue statements in C

In various scenarios, you need to either exit the loop or skip an iteration of loop when certain condition is  met. In those scenarios are know as jumping out of loop. There are two ways in which you can achieve the same.

 

Break statement 

When break statement is encountered inside a loop, the loop is immediately exited and the program continues with the statement immediately follow the loop.

In case of nested loop, if the break statement is encountered in the inner loop then inner loop is exited.

The following example shows the use of break statement 

int main()
{
int counter;
for (counter=1; counter<=10; counter++)
{
if(counter==5)
{
break;
}
printf("%d", counter);
}
return 0;
}

Continue statement 

Continue statement sends the control directly to the test condition and then continue the loop process. on encountering continue keyword, execution flow leaves the current iteration of loop, and starts with the next iteration.

 

 

 The following C program show the use of continue statement 

int main()
{
int counter;
for (counter =1; counter<=10; counter++)
{
if(counter%2==1)
{
continue;
}
printf("%d", counter);
}
return 0;
}