🐍BREAK AND CONTINUE

Break and Continue in Python

Sometimes you need more control inside loops. The break and continue statements help you change how a loop runs.

Why Break and Continue?

Normally, loops run until their condition becomes False or until all items are processed. But what if you want to:

• Stop the loop early? 👉 Use break
• Skip to the next iteration without stopping the whole loop? 👉 Use continue

1. Break Statement

break immediately ends the loop, even if the condition is still True.

for i in range(1, 10):
    if i == 5:
        break   # loop stops when i == 5
    print(i)

Output: 1 2 3 4

The loop stops when i becomes 5.

2. Continue Statement

continue skips the current iteration and jumps to the next one.

for i in range(1, 10):
    if i == 5:
        continue   # skips printing when i == 5
    print(i)

Output: 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9

The number 5 is skipped, but the loop continues for the remaining numbers.

3. Break and Continue in While Loops

i = 0
while i < 10:
    i += 1
    if i == 3:
        continue   # skip when i == 3
    if i == 7:
        break      # stop when i == 7
    print(i)

Output: 1 2 4 5 6

Common Mistakes

• Indentation Errors: Forgetting to indent break or continue properly inside the loop block.
• Using Break Outside a Loop:

  
  break   # ❌ SyntaxError: 'break' outside loop
  

• Using Continue Outside a Loop:

  
  continue   # ❌ SyntaxError: 'continue' not properly in loop
  

• Infinite Loops: Using continue without updating variables in a while loop can cause infinite loops.

💡 Practice Challenges

1. Write a loop that prints numbers from 1 to 20 but stops if the number is 13.
2. Write a loop that prints numbers from 1 to 10 but skips multiples of 3.
3. Ask the user to keep entering numbers, but stop the loop if the user enters 0.
4. Print all even numbers between 1 and 50, skipping the odd numbers with continue.

What’s Next?

Now that you understand break and continue, we will move to another important loop control — the for-else and while-else construct in Python.

➡️ Next: Loop Else in Python

⬅️ Back to Main Page

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