continue

Goal of This Episode

Use continue to skip certain iterations of a loop.

Main Text

Earlier we learned that break jumps out of a loop. Today it’s continue — which doesn’t exit the loop, but skips the current iteration and goes straight to the next one.

Printing Only Odd Numbers

fn main() {
    for i in 0..10 {
        if i % 2 == 0 {
            continue;
        }
        println!("{}", i);
    }
}

How Does It Work?

The loop runs i from 0 to 9:

• i = 0 → Is 0 % 2 == 0? Yes (even), continue! Skip it, don’t print.
• i = 1 → Is 1 % 2 == 0? No (odd), keep going, print 1.
• i = 2 → Even, continue, skip.
• i = 3 → Odd, print 3.
• …and so on.

break vs continue

• break: The whole loop ends; no more iterations.
• continue: Skip this iteration, but the loop continues with the next one.

Like break, continue only acts on loops — it doesn’t skip control structures like if. In the code above, continue skips the current iteration of the for loop, not the if.

Another Example

Skip 5 and don’t print it:

fn main() {
    for i in 1..=10 {
        if i == 5 {
            continue;
        }
        println!("{}", i);
    }
}

5 gets skipped; everything else prints normally.

continue + Loop Labels

Last episode we learned that break 'outer can exit a specific loop layer. continue works with labels too:

fn main() {
    'outer: for i in 1..=3 {
        for j in 1..=3 {
            if j == 2 {
                continue 'outer; // Skip to the outer loop's next iteration
            }
            println!("i={}, j={}", i, j);
        }
    }
}

Each time j reaches 2, continue 'outer jumps straight to the outer loop’s next iteration, so j=2 and j=3 never get printed.

Recap

• continue skips the current iteration and goes straight to the next one.
• break means “stop the whole loop”; continue means “skip the current iteration and run the next one.”
• Pair it with if to selectively skip particular cases.
• continue 'outer works with loop labels to skip the current iteration of an outer loop.