Break and Continue in C#
Break
Often
times programmers need to break out of the middle of any loop – for, while, do
… while, or foreach; and to do such a task, C# provides the break statement. The
break statement is also used to break out of the switch statement as we have
seen in the previous tutorial.
The
general form of the break statement is:
break;
Observe
the following code segment:
int i = 0;
while (i < 10)
{
Console.Write(i + "\t");
i++;
if(i==5)
{
break;
}
}
If
the value of ‘i’ is evaluated to 5, then the value of the ‘if statement’ will
be evaluated to true and the computer will execute the ‘break’ statement
forcing the control to jump out of the while loop.
The
above code segment can be represented diagrammatically using the following flow
chart.
The output of
the above piece of code is:
0 1 2 3 4
Vital Notes:
1. When a computer executes a break
statement in a loop, it jumps out of the loop.
2. A break statement jumps out of
a loop that immediately encloses the break statement.
Continue
The
continue
statement passes control to the next iteration of the enclosing while,
do,
for,
or foreach
statement in which it appears. It informs the computer to skip the current
iteration of the loop. When it is executed it doesn’t jump out of the loop;
instead, it jumps back to the condition of the loop and continues with the next
iteration.
Observe
the following code segment:
int i = 0;
while (i<10)
{
i++;
if (i > 2)
{
continue;
}
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
The above piece of code can be
represented using a flow chart as follows:
The following program calculates the average salary of employees using a while loop, break and continue statements.
The following program calculates the average salary of employees using a while loop, break and continue statements.
/*
* Author: Temesghen Tekeste
* The for loop construct in C#.
* mail: mail.temesghen.tekeste@gmail.com
* */
using System;
namespace BreakAndContinueDemo
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Welcome to Average
Salary Calculator");
Console.WriteLine();
decimal employeeSalary = 0.0M;
int numberOfEmployees = 0;
while (true)
{
Console.Write("Enter salary of
employee number " + (++numberOfEmployees) + ": ");
employeeSalary += Decimal.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
Console.Write("Press \"0\"
to enter another employee salary OR \"1\" to show average salary:
");
int continueOrQuit = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
Console.WriteLine();
if (continueOrQuit == 0)
{
continue;
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("Output");
Console.WriteLine("Number of employees:
" +
numberOfEmployees);
Console.WriteLine("Averge salary: " + (employeeSalary /
numberOfEmployees));
break;
}
}
Console.Write("Press any key to
quit");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
Sample Output:
References:
break (msdn C# Reference)
continue (msdn C# Reference)
