Core JavaScript 1.5 Guide:Loop Statements:continue Statement

From MDC

[edit] continue Statement

The continue statement can be used to restart a while, do-while, for, or label statement.

• When you use continue without a label, it terminates the current iteration of the innermost enclosing while, do-while or for statement and continues execution of the loop with the next iteration. In contrast to the break statement, continue does not terminate the execution of the loop entirely. In a while loop, it jumps back to the condition. In a for loop, it jumps to the increment-expression.
• When you use continue with a label, it applies to the looping statement identified with that label.

The syntax of the continue statement looks like the following:

1. continue
2. continue label

Example 1
The following example shows a while loop with a continue statement that executes when the value of i is three. Thus, n takes on the values one, three, seven, and twelve.

i = 0;
n = 0;
while (i < 5) {
   i++;
   if (i == 3)
      continue;
   n += i;
}

Example 2
A statement labeled checkiandj contains a statement labeled checkj. If continue is encountered, the program terminates the current iteration of checkj and begins the next iteration. Each time continue is encountered, checkj reiterates until its condition returns false. When false is returned, the remainder of the checkiandj statement is completed, and checkiandj reiterates until its condition returns false. When false is returned, the program continues at the statement following checkiandj.

If continue had a label of checkiandj, the program would continue at the top of the checkiandj statement.

checkiandj :
   while (i < 4) {
      document.write(i + "<br/>");
      i += 1;
      checkj :
         while (j > 4) {
            document.write(j + "<br/>");
            j -= 1;
            if ((j % 2) == 0)
               continue checkj;
            document.write(j + " is odd.<br/>");
         }
      document.write("i = " + i + "<br/>");
      document.write("j = " + j + "<br/>");
   }