PHP: continue - Manual

continue

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration and continue execution at the condition evaluation and then the beginning of the next iteration.

Note: In PHP the switch statement is considered a looping structure for the purposes of continue. continue behaves like break (when no arguments are passed). If a switch is inside a loop, continue 2 will continue with the next iteration of the outer loop.

continue accepts an optional numeric argument which tells it how many levels of enclosing loops it should skip to the end of. The default value is 1, thus skipping to the end of the current loop.


<?php
foreach ($arr as $key => $value) {
    if (!($key % 2)) { // skip even members
        continue;
    }
    do_something_odd($value);
}

$i = 0;
while ($i++ < 5) {
    echo "Outer<br />\n";
    while (1) {
        echo "Middle<br />\n";
        while (1) {
            echo "Inner<br />\n";
            continue 3;
        }
        echo "This never gets output.<br />\n";
    }
    echo "Neither does this.<br />\n";
}
?>

Omitting the semicolon after continue can lead to confusion. Here's an example of what you shouldn't do.


<?php
for ($i = 0; $i < 5; ++$i) {
    if ($i == 2)
        continue
    print "$i\n";
}
?>

One can expect the result to be:

but, in PHP versions below 5.4.0, this script will output:

because the entire continue print "$i\n"; is evaluated as a single expression, and so print is called only when $i == 2 is true. (The return value of print is passed to continue as the numeric argument.)

Note:
As of PHP 5.4.0, the above example will raise an E_COMPILE_ERROR error.

Changelog for *continue*
Version	Description
7.0.0	continue outside of a loop or switch control structure is now detected at compile-time instead of run-time as before, and triggers an `E_COMPILE_ERROR`.
5.4.0	continue 0; is no longer valid. In previous versions it was interpreted the same as continue 1;.
5.4.0	Removed the ability to pass in variables (e.g., $num = 2; continue $num;) as the numerical argument.

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User Contributed Notes 18 notes

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106

jaimthorn at yahoo dot com ¶

9 years ago


The remark "in PHP the switch statement is considered a looping structure for the purposes of continue" near the top of this page threw me off, so I experimented a little using the following code to figure out what the exact semantics of continue inside a switch is:

<?php

    for( $i = 0; $i < 3; ++ $i )
    {
        echo ' [', $i, '] ';
        switch( $i )
        {
            case 0: echo 'zero'; break;
            case 1: echo 'one' ; XXXX;
            case 2: echo 'two' ; break;
        }
        echo ' <' , $i, '> ';
    }

?>

For XXXX I filled in

- continue 1
- continue 2
- break 1
- break 2

and observed the different results.  This made me come up with the following one-liner that describes the difference between break and continue:

continue resumes execution just before the closing curly bracket ( } ), and break resumes execution just after the closing curly bracket.

Corollary: since a switch is not (really) a looping structure, resuming execution just before a switch's closing curly bracket has the same effect as using a break statement.  In the case of (for, while, do-while) loops, resuming execution just prior their closing curly brackets means that a new iteration is started --which is of course very unlike the behavior of a break statement.

In the one-liner above I ignored the existence of parameters to break/continue, but the one-liner is also valid when parameters are supplied.

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Nikolay Ermolenko ¶

10 years ago


Using continue and break:



<?php

$stack = array('first', 'second', 'third', 'fourth', 'fifth');



foreach($stack AS $v){

    if($v == 'second')continue;

    if($v == 'fourth')break;

    echo $v.'<br>';

}

/*



first

third



*/



$stack2 = array('one'=>'first', 'two'=>'second', 'three'=>'third', 'four'=>'fourth', 'five'=>'fifth');

foreach($stack2 AS $k=>$v){

    if($v == 'second')continue;

    if($k == 'three')continue;

    if($v == 'fifth')break;

    echo $k.' ::: '.$v.'<br>';

}

/*



one ::: first

four ::: fourth



*/



?>

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rjsteinert.com ¶

8 years ago


The most basic example that print "13", skipping over 2.

<?php
$arr = array(1, 2, 3);
foreach($arr as $number) {
  if($number == 2) {
    continue;
  }
  print $number;
}
?>

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Koen ¶

6 years ago


If you use a incrementing value in your loop, be sure to increment it before calling continue; or you might get an infinite loop.

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greg AT laundrymat.tv ¶

14 years ago


You using continue in a file included in a loop will produce an error.  For example:

//page1.php
for($x=0;$x<10;$x++)
   {
    include('page2.php');    
}

//page2.php

if($x==5)
    continue;
else 
   print $x;

it should print

"012346789" no five, but it produces an error:

Cannot break/continue 1 level in etc.

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www.derosetechnologies.com ¶

15 years ago


In the same way that one can append a number to the end of a break statement to indicate the "loop" level upon which one wishes to 'break' , one can append a number to the end of a 'continue' statement to acheive the same goal. Here's a quick example:

<?
    for ($i = 0;$i<3;$i++) {
        echo "Start Of I loop\n";
        for ($j=0;;$j++) {
            
            if ($j >= 2) continue 2; // This "continue" applies to the "$i" loop 
            echo "I : $i J : $j"."\n";
        }
        echo "End\n";
    }
?>

The output here is:
Start Of I loop
I : 0 J : 0
I : 0 J : 1
Start Of I loop
I : 1 J : 0
I : 1 J : 1
Start Of I loop
I : 2 J : 0
I : 2 J : 1

For more information, see the php manual's entry for the 'break' statement.

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Geekman ¶

11 years ago


For clarification, here are some examples of continue used in a while/do-while loop, showing that it has no effect on the conditional evaluation element.

<?php
// Outputs "1 ".
$i = 0;
while ($i == 0) {
    $i++;
    echo "$i ";
    if ($i == 1) continue;
}

// Outputs "1 2 ".
$i = 0;
do {
    $i++;
    echo "$i ";
    if ($i == 2) continue;
} while ($i == 1);
?>

Both code snippets would behave exactly the same without continue.

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-2

skippychalmers at gmail dot com ¶

8 years ago


To state the obvious, it should be noted, that the optional param defaults to 1 (effectively).

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-2

tufan dot oezduman at gmail dot com ¶

12 years ago


a possible explanation for the behavior of continue in included scripts mentioned by greg and dedlfix above may be the following line of the "return" documentation: "If the current script file was include()ed or require()ed, then control is passed back to the calling file." 
The example of greg produces an error since page2.php does not contain any loop-operations. 

So the only way to give the control back to the loop-operation  in page1.php would be a return.

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-5

Anonymous ¶

8 years ago


<?php

function print_primes_between($x,$y)

{

    for($i=$x;$i<=$y;$i++) 

   {

        for($j= 2; $j < $i; $j++)  if($i%$j==0) continue 2;

        echo $i.",";

   }

}

?>



This function, using continue syntax, is to print prime numbers between given numbers, x and y.

For example, print_primes_between(10,20) will output:



11,13,17,19,23,29,

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-2

send at mail dot 2aj dot net ¶

1 year ago


As of PHP 7.0, instead of code executing up until encountering a continue (or break) call outside of a loop statement, the code will simply not execute.

If you need to correct such error cases as part of an upgrade, you may need to substitute either an exit or return to maintain the existing behavior of such legacy code.

<?php

class ok {

    function foo() {
        echo "start\n";

        for ($i = 0; $i < 5; $i++) {
            echo "before\n";
            $this->bar($i);
            echo "after\n";
        }

        echo "finish\n";
    }

    function bar($i) {
        echo "inside iteration $i\n";
        
        if ($i == 3) {
            echo "continuing\n";
            continue;
        }

        echo "inside after $i\n";
    }
}

$ex = new ok();

$ex->foo();

?>

sh> php56 continue.php 
start
before
inside iteration 0
inside after 0
after
before
inside iteration 1
inside after 1
after
before
inside iteration 2
inside after 2
after
before
inside iteration 3
continuing
PHP Fatal error:  Cannot break/continue 1 level in continue.php on line 22
PHP Stack trace:
PHP   1. {main}() continue.php:0
PHP   2. ok->foo() continue.php:31
PHP   3. ok->bar() continue.php:10

sh> php70 continue.php 
PHP Fatal error:  'continue' not in the 'loop' or 'switch' context in continue.php on line 22

Fatal error: 'continue' not in the 'loop' or 'switch' context in continue.php on line 22

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-7

maik penz ¶

7 years ago


Please note that with PHP 5.4 continue 0; will fail with

PHP Fatal error:  'continue' operator accepts only positive numbers

(same is true for break).

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-6

John ¶

5 years ago


<?php

echo"\n";
echo"\n";

    for ( $i = 0; $i < 5; $i++ ) {

        switch ($i)
        {

            case 0:
                echo $i . "b";
                continue;
                echo $i . "a";
            case 1:    
                echo $i . "b";
                continue 2;
                echo $i . "a";
            case 2:    
                echo $i . "b";
                break;
                echo $i . "a";
            case 3:
                echo $i . "b";
                break 2;
                echo $i . "a";
            case 4:
                echo $i;
            
        }

        echo 9;

    }

echo"\n";
echo"\n";

?>

This results in: 0b91b2b93b

It goes to show that in a switch statement break and continue are the same. But in loops break stops the loop completely and continue just stops executing the current iterations code and moves onto the next loop iteration.

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-6

net_navard at yahoo dot com ¶

13 years ago


Hello firends

It is said in manually:
continue also accepts an optional numeric argument which tells it how many levels of enclosing loops it should .

In order to understand better this,An example for that:
<?php

/*continue also accepts an optional numeric argument which 
    tells it how many levels of enclosing loops it should skip.*/

for($k=0;$k<2;$k++)
{//First loop

    
    for($j=0;$j<2;$j++)
    {//Second loop

      for($i=0;$i<4;$i++)
      {//Third loop
    if($i>2)
    continue 2;// If $i >2 ,Then it skips to the Second loop(level 2),And starts the next step,
    echo "$i\n";
       }

    }

}

?>

Merry's christmas :)
    
With regards,Hossein

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-9

Anonymous ¶

11 years ago


The continue keyword can skip division by zero:
<?php
$i = 100;
while ($i > -100)
{
    $i--;
    if ($i == 0)
    {
        continue;
    }
    echo (200 / $i) . "<br />";
}
?>

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-7

dedlfix gives me a hint ¶

14 years ago


a possible solution for 
greg AT laundrymat.tv

I've got the same problem as Greg
and now it works very fine by using
return() instead of continue.

It seems, that you have to use return()
if you have a file included and
you want to continue with the next loop

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-18

szrrya at yahoo dot com ¶

13 years ago


Documentation states:

"continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration"

Current functionality treats switch structures as looping in regards to continue.  It has the same effect as break.

The following code is an example:

<?php
for ($i1 = 0; $i1 < 2; $i1++) {
  // Loop 1.
  for ($i2 = 0; $i2 < 2; $i2++) {
    // Loop 2.
    switch ($i2 % 2) {
      case 0:
        continue;
        break;
    }
    print '[' . $i2 . ']<br>';
  }
  print $i1 . '<br>';
}
?>

This outputs the following:
[0]
[1]
0
[0]
[1]
1

Switch is documented as a block of if...elseif... statements, so you might expect the following output:
[1]
0
[1]
1

This output requires you to either change the switch to an if or use the numerical argument and treat the switch as one loop.

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-23

Rene ¶

13 years ago


(only) the reason that is given on the "Continue with missing semikolon" example is wrong.

the script will output "2" because the missing semikolon causes that the "print"-call is executed only if the "if" statement is true. It has nothing to to with "what" the "print"-call would return or not return, but the returning value can cause to skip to the end of higher level Loops if any call is used that will return a bigger number than 1.

<?php
continue print "$i\n";
?>

because of the optional argument, the script will not run into a "unexpected T_PRINT" error. It will not run into an error, too, if the call after continue does return anything but a number.

i suggest to change it from:
because the return value of the print() call is int(1), and it will look like the optional numeric argument mentioned above.

to
because the print() call will look like the optional numeric argument mentioned above.

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