break-and-continue.md

Python by Example: Break and Continue

Sometimes you need to change loop behavior mid-iteration. break exits the loop immediately. continue skips the rest of the current iteration and jumps to the next. Both work in for and while loops. Use them when the normal loop flow isn't enough.

What you'll learn:

• break: exit the loop now
• continue: skip to the next iteration

# break: exit loop when condition is met
for i in range(5):
    if i == 3:
        break
    print(i)
print("done with break")

# continue: skip current iteration
for i in range(5):
    if i == 2:
        continue
    print(i)
print("done with continue")

With break, we never print 3—we leave the loop as soon as i is 3. With continue, we skip printing 2 but keep looping. The loop body after continue is not executed for that iteration.

To run this program:

$ python source/break-and-continue.py
0
1
2
done with break
0
1
3
4
done with continue

Tip: Prefer clear loop conditions over break when possible. But break is fine for "found what we needed" or "error, stop" cases.

Try it: Change the break condition to i == 1 and see how the output changes.

Source: break-and-continue.py

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