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Break and Continue

Control loop execution with break and continue statements.

The break and continue statements give you fine-grained control over loop execution. Break lets you exit a loop early when a condition is met, while continue skips the rest of the current iteration and moves to the next. These tools are essential for writing efficient loops that handle special cases gracefully.

📚 Concepts & Theory

The break Statement

Exits the loop immediately:

for i in range(10):
    if i == 5:
        break
    print(i)
# Prints: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4

The continue Statement

Skips to the next iteration:

for i in range(5):
    if i == 2:
        continue
    print(i)
# Prints: 0, 1, 3, 4 (skips 2)

Common Use Cases

Search and stop:

for user in users:

    if user.name == "Alice":

        found = user

        break

Skip invalid items:

for item in data:

    if not item.is_valid():

        continue

    process(item)

With while Loops

while True:
    response = input("Enter quit to exit: ")
    if response == "quit":
        break
    print(f"You entered: {response}")

🎯 Your Challenge

Write a for loop that iterates through numbers 1 to 10. Use continue to skip even numbers (print only odd numbers). Use break to stop the loop when you reach 7.

📝 Starter Code

Python

# Print odd numbers from 1 to 10, but stop at 7
for i in range(1, 11):
    # Skip even numbers
    if i % 2 == 0:
        
    # Stop at 7
    if i == 7:
        
    print(i)

continue skips the rest of the loop body
break exits the loop entirely
Check for skip conditions before break conditions
i % 2 == 0 checks if a number is even

Solution

Python

for i in range(1, 11):
    if i % 2 == 0:
        continue
    if i == 7:
        break
    print(i)

Explanation

For each number, we first check if it is even (i % 2 == 0) and skip it with continue. Then we check if we have reached 7 and exit with break. This prints only 1, 3, 5.

⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

Putting break before continue (wrong order)
Using break when you mean continue
Forgetting that break only exits the innermost loop
Not understanding that code after continue is skipped

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

No, break only exits the innermost loop. To exit multiple loops, you can use a flag variable or refactor into a function with return.

Yes! Both work the same way in for and while loops.