Java continue statement

🚀 Java continue Statement: The Art of Skipping! 🎭

The continue statement in Java is like that one friend who skips all the boring parts of a conversation and jumps straight to the good stuff. 😆 It helps us skip the current iteration of a loop and move on to the next one—no hard feelings!

🎯 What's the Deal with continue?

The continue statement works inside for, while, or do-while loops and behaves almost like break, except it doesn’t rudely terminate the loop—it just skips the current iteration and moves to the next.

🤔 How Does It Work?

• In a for loop, continue jumps directly to the increment/decrement part.
• In a while or do-while loop, continue sends control straight to the condition check.

Let’s see continue in action:

int n = 10;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    if (i % 2 != 0) { // Skip odd numbers
        continue;
    }
    System.out.print(i + " ");
}

🔹 Output:

0 2 4 6 8

See? All the odd numbers just vanished! Magic? Nope. Just continue doing its thing. 🪄

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🔥 Syntax of continue

The syntax is as simple as skipping leg day at the gym. 💪

while (testExpression) {
  // Some statements
  if (continue-condition)
    continue;
  // More statements (skipped if continue is hit)
}

When the continue-condition is met, Java skips the remaining code inside the loop and jumps straight to the next iteration.

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🎭 Types of continue Statements

Java offers two flavors of continue statements:

🍩 1. Unlabeled continue

This is the basic form of continue. It simply skips the current iteration of the loop it’s in.

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if (i % 2 == 0) {
        continue; // Skip even numbers
    }
    System.out.println("Odd number: " + i);
}

🔹 Output:

Odd number: 1
Odd number: 3
Odd number: 5
Odd number: 7
Odd number: 9

🎯 2. Labeled continue

Sometimes, you need more control. Labeled continue lets you skip an iteration in an outer loop instead of just the current one. Think of it as a VIP pass to the next level. 🎟️

outer:
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++) {
        if (j == 1) {
            continue outer; // Skip to the next iteration of outer loop
        }
        System.out.println("i = " + i + ", j = " + j);
    }
}

🔹 Output:

i = 0, j = 0
i = 1, j = 0
i = 2, j = 0

Whenever j == 1, it skips the rest of the inner loop and moves to the next iteration of the outer loop. Pretty neat, right? 😎

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🎬 continue in Action: A Real-Life Example

Let’s use continue to print only odd numbers from 0 to 9:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if (i % 2 == 0) {
        continue; // Skip even numbers
    }
    System.out.println("The number is " + i);
}

🔹 Output:

The number is 1
The number is 3
The number is 5
The number is 7
The number is 9

Now, what if we don’t use continue? We can achieve the same result with an if statement:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    if (i % 2 != 0) {
        System.out.println("The number is " + i);
    }
}

The result is the same, but hey—sometimes continue just makes things more fun! 🎢

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⚠️ A Word of Caution

While continue is super useful, don’t overuse it! Too many continue and break statements can make your code hard to read. Sometimes, a simple if statement does the job just as well.

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🎉 Conclusion

The continue statement is like a "skip this one" button for loops. It’s useful when you need to avoid certain iterations without stopping the entire loop. 🚀

• Use unlabeled continue to skip the current iteration.
• Use labeled continue when working with nested loops.
• Don’t abuse it—clean code is happy code! 😃

That’s all, folks! Keep coding and keep skipping the boring parts! 🎈

Happy Learning! 🚀😃