Computer FAQs & Tips

Let’s get it right and understand on usage of break and continue Statements in Java Programming Language.

break Statement

This statement causes iteration to stop/exit immediately, any line remained after this statement will be ignored by the JVM.

It is used in the following loop

• for
• while
• do…while
• switch

continue Statement

This statement skips the current iteration of the loop, any line after this statement will not be executed by the JVM until the condition is met.

It is used in the following loop

• for
• while
• do…while

Example code below demonstrating how break and continue statement work

public class BreakContinueStm {
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        int aBreak = 0;
        int bContinue = 0;
 
        for (int i=1; i<=10; i++){
            if (i == 6){
                // that's enough, exit this for loop here
                break;
            }
            aBreak = i;
            System.out.println("aBreak: " + aBreak);
        }
 
        for (int i=1; i<=10; i++){
            if (i <= 5){
                // not satisfied yet, keep going
                continue;
            }
            bContinue = i;
            System.out.println("bContinue: " + bContinue);
        }
 
    }
 
}

Result of this program, aBreak stops when i = 6 and bContinue starts when i = 6 until end of the loop

aBreak: 1
aBreak: 2
aBreak: 3
aBreak: 4
aBreak: 5
bContinue: 6
bContinue: 7
bContinue: 8
bContinue: 9
bContinue: 10