Purpose of the continue Statement in C programming

Purpose of the continue Statement in C

The continue statement in C is used to skip the remaining code inside the current iteration of a loop and immediately proceed to the next iteration. It is commonly used when a specific condition is met, and the rest of the loop body should be bypassed for that iteration.

How It Works

When the continue statement is encountered within a loop, it causes the loop to skip the remaining statements in that iteration and jump directly to the condition check for the next iteration. This behavior differs between different types of loops:

• In a for loop: The continue statement skips to the increment/decrement statement before re-evaluating the loop condition.
• In a while or do-while loop: The continue statement immediately jumps to the condition check.

Example Code

Here’s an example demonstrating how to use the continue statement:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        if (i % 2 == 0) {
            continue;  // Skip the rest of the loop body if i is even
        }
        printf("%d\n", i);
    }

    return 0;
}

In this example:

• The for loop iterates from 0 to 9.
• The if statement checks if the current value of i is even.
• If i is even, the continue statement is executed, skipping the printf function call for that iteration.
• Only odd numbers are printed because the even numbers are skipped by the continue statement.

Key Points

• Skipping Code: The continue statement is used to skip specific parts of the loop body when certain conditions are met.
• Control Flow: It affects the control flow by jumping directly to the condition check of the loop, avoiding the remaining code in the current iteration.
• Use Cases: Useful for bypassing code that is not needed for certain iterations, such as skipping over invalid data or specific conditions.

Note: The continue statement should be used judiciously to ensure that it does not inadvertently lead to unintended behavior or infinite loops.