C – continue statement in C with example

Continue statement is mostly used inside loops. Whenever it is encountered inside a loop, control directly jumps to the beginning of the loop for next iteration, skipping the execution of statements inside loop’s body for the current iteration.

How this is used inside program?

continue;

Example: continue statement inside for loop

..
for (int j=0; j<=8; j++)
{
    if (j==4)
    {
          continue;
    }

    printf("%d ", j);
}
..

Output:

0 1 2 3 5 6 7 8

Value 4 is missing in the output, why? When j’s value is 4, the program encountered a continue statement, which makes it to jump at the beginning of for loop for next iteration, skipping the statements for current iteration (that’s the reason printf didn’t execute when j is equal to 4).

Example: Use of continue in While loop

..
int counter=10;
while (counter >=0)
{
   if (counter==7)
   {
        counter--;
        continue;
   }
   printf("%d  ", counter);
   counter--;
}
..

Output:

10 9 8 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Iteration is skipped when counter value is 7.

Another Example of continue & do-While loop

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
   int j=0;
   do
   {
      if (j==7)
      {
         j++;
         continue;
      }
      printf("\nvalue of j: %d", j);
      j++;
   }while(j<10);
   return 0;
}

Output:

value of j: 0
value of j: 1
value of j: 2
value of j: 3
value of j: 4
value of j: 5
value of j: 6
value of j: 8
value of j: 9