Break, Continue and Labels

Break and Continue

• break and continue are designed to stop either the entire loop (break) or just the current iteration (continue).

continue

• must be inside the loop
• causes the current iteration of the inner most loop to cease and the next to start

break

•  a break without a label breaks the current loop. No more iterations.

Labelled Statements

• normally used with loops, but not always
• often used with break and continue
• the label is placed just before the statement it labels and ends with a colon. e.g. LABEL:.

break label;

• can ONLY be used to label a loop or a block. If used to label a statement the code will not compile.
• the flow will exit out of the loop labeled by the label in the break statement.
• if this happens within a try…catch then the control will go to the finally statement.

continue label;

• the flow will continue with the next iteration of the loop labelled in the continue statement.