C# Loop - Break VS. Continue

C# loop - break vs. continue

break will exit the loop completely, continue will just skip the current iteration.

For example:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if (i == 0) {
        break;
    }

    DoSomeThingWith(i);
}

The break will cause the loop to exit on the first iteration - DoSomeThingWith will never be executed. This here:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if(i == 0) {
        continue;
    }

    DoSomeThingWith(i);
}

Will not execute DoSomeThingWith for i = 0, but the loop will continue and DoSomeThingWith will be executed for i = 1 to i = 9.

Difference between break and continue statement

break leaves a loop, continue jumps to the next iteration.

When to use break, and continue in C language?

Break,as the name suggests will break the execution of current loop once and for all while Continue will skip the execution of following statements and start new iteration.

It is known that loop may have it's termination condition, but sometimes it is possible that you achieve your goal before all the iteration has been executed (for example, consider best case scenario of Linear Search. It is possible that you found your element on 1st or 2nd iteration.)

In case of CONTINUE, sometimes it's possible that we need to skip some statement to get executed, but don't want to break the loop.
(For example as given in the link, the requirement is to sum the positive elements of array.In this case you need to skip negative elements, which can be achieved by Continue keyword.)

Yes, you can use them both with loop and without loop (for i.e in if..else or else..if ladder).

And yes, it is certainly a good practice to use them as both can save lot of execution time according to requirements.

For more info: Click here and here

Hope it will help!!

break and continue in a loop enclosed switch block

If there are some lines of code after the switch, continue keyword will ignore them. Try this and you will see the different:

while(condition)
{
    switch(anumber)
    {
        case 0:
            //do something
            break;
        case 1:
            //do something
            break;
        //and so on
    }
    Console.WriteLine("it's a message");
}

and

while(condition)
{
    switch(anumber)
    {
        case 0:
            //do something
            continue;
        case 1:
            //do something
            continue;
        //and so on
    }
    Console.WriteLine("it's a message");
}

ForEach() : Why can't use break/continue inside

Because ForEach is a method and not a regular foreach loop. The ForEach method is there for simple tasks, if you need to break or continue just iterate over lstTemp with a regular foreach loop.

Usually, ForEach is implemented like this:

public static ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> input, Action<T> action)
{
  foreach(var i in input)
    action(i);
}

As it is a normal method call, action doesn't know anything about the enclosing foreach, thus you can't break.

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