control-structures continue - continue

continue

(PHP 4, PHP5)

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: Note that in PHP the switch statement is considered a looping structure for the purposes of continue.

continue accepts an optional numeric argument which tells it how many levels of enclosing loops it should skip to the end of.

Note:
continue 0; and continue 1; is the same as running continue;.

 <?php
while (list($key, $value) = each($arr)) {
    if (!($key % 2)) { // skip odd members
        continue;
    }
    do_something_odd($value);
}

$i = 0;
while ($i++ < 5) {
    echo "Outer<br />\n";
    while (1) {
        echo "&nbsp;Middle<br />\n";
        while (1) {
            echo "&nbsp;&nbsp;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:

 0 1 3 4

but 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.)