JavaScript Break and Continue Statements

Having worked with JavaScript for a long while now, there are times when you will find the need to break out of a loop when a certain condition is met, or just skip the current iteration to the next iteration for one reason or another.
These situations can be solved by using the following statements:

1. break statement
2. continue statement

These statements can really come in handy to certain logic in the code or especially when wanting to avoid the long way of breaking a loop or skipping an iteration.

Let’s see how they can be used.

Break Statement

The break statement is used to terminate a loop and get out of it. Then, the code following the loop code block will be executed next (if any).

It is usually used inside a conditional statement whereby when a condition is met, for one reason or another, it stops the loop and gets out of it. How it is done is by simply writing break.

Syntax:

break;

Example:

for (let i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
  if (i === 4) { break; }
  console.log("Iteration i: " + i);
}

// Output:
Iteration i: 0
Iteration i: 1
Iteration i: 2
Iteration i: 3

Without the break statement, the output will typically appear as follow:

// Output:
Iteration i: 0
Iteration i: 1
Iteration i: 2
Iteration i: 3
Iteration i: 4
Iteration i: 5
Iteration i: 6
Iteration i: 7

So, to recap, based on the example above we can see that when condition is met, the break statement is run and as the result, it terminates the loop immediately.

This statement also can be used in the switch statements which are like conditional statements. However, for this article, we will only take a look at the use for loops.

Continue Statement

The continue statement is used to skip an iteration of the loop.
This statement too, can be used in the switch statements.

The continue statement basically breaks one iteration of the loop, if a specified condition is met, and continues with the next iteration of the loop. How it is written is similar to the break statement.

Syntax:

continue;

Example:

for (let i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
  if (i === 4) { continue; }
  console.log("Iteration i: " + i);
}

// Output:
Iteration i: 0
Iteration i: 1
Iteration i: 2
Iteration i: 3
Iteration i: 5
Iteration i: 6
Iteration i: 7

Using the example above, we can see that the iteration 4 is skipped because we wrote that when it is 4, we will continue to the next iteration. Thus, its turn is skipped from being printed out.

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That’s all for the two statements for now. They are just useful basics that might be used often in your code.

I hope this article is of help to you. If you think that this article is helpful and it can be of help to other people, please share for them to read as well. Your thoughts and comments are also welcome!

Thanks for reading~