break and continue

What You’ll Learn

You’ll learn how to stop a loop early or skip specific iterations.

The break Statement

With the break statement we can stop the loop before it has looped through all the items.

fruits = ["apple", "banana", "cherry", "mango"]

for fruit in fruits:
    print(fruit)
    if fruit == "cherry":
        print("Found cherry! Stopping.")
        break

Expected Output:

apple
banana
cherry
Found cherry! Stopping.

Notice that “mango” is never printed because the loop was broken.

The continue Statement

With the continue statement we can stop the current iteration of the loop, and continue with the next.

for i in range(5):
    if i == 2:
        continue # Skip the rest of the code for i=2
    print(i)

Expected Output:

0
1
3
4

Notice that 2 is missing.

Summary

• break: Exits the entire loop immediately.
• continue: Exits the current iteration and jumps to the next one.