break and continue are control flow statements used inside of loops. break is used to break out of its
innermost enclosing loop and continue will continue with the next iteration.
The example below illustrates the use of break in a while loop:
n = 1
while n < 10:
if n % 3 == 0:
print("Found a number divisible by 3", n)
break
n = n + 1
This next example uses continue inside a for loop:
words = ["alice", "bob", "charlie"]
for word in words:
if word == word[::-1]:
print("Found a palindrome", word)
continue
print("This is not a palindrome", word)
Python will raise a SyntaxError when break or continue are used outside of for or
while loops.
If the goal is to interrupt the main program flow, quit(), exit(), os._exit() and sys.exit()
are the preferred way.
Code examples
Noncompliant code example
narg=len(sys.argv)
if narg == 1:
print('@Usage: input_filename nelements nintervals')
break
Compliant solution
narg=len(sys.argv)
if narg == 1:
print('@Usage: input_filename nelements nintervals')
sys.exit()
