Loop control statements are also known as Jump statement. The use of jump statement changes the state of execution. This statement help in exiting the loops statement.
C supports three control statements.
- break statement
- continue statement
- goto
break statement in C
break statement is mostly used in a switch statement to terminate the cases present in a switch statement. It terminates the loop and transfers the execution process immediately to a statement following the loop.
The use of break statements in nested loops terminates the inner loop and the control is transferred to the outer loop. If the break statement is used in nested loops (i.e., loop within another loop), the break statement will end the execution of the inner loop and Program control goes back to the outer loop.
break statement Flowchart:
Syntax of break statement in C:
1 | break; |
Click here for example of break statement in C.
continue statement in C
In C programming, the continue statement works like a break statement, instead of terminating the loop the continue statement skips the code in between and passes the execution to the next iteration in the loop.
continue statement Flowchart:
Syntax of continue statement in C:
1 | continue; |
In the case of for loop, the continue statement skips the test condition and increment the value of the variable to execute again while in the case of while and do…while loops, continue skips all the statements and program control goes to at the end of the loop for tests condition.
Click here for example of continue statement in C.
goto statement in C
goto statement allows the user in the program to jump the execution to the labeled statement inside the function. The label (tag) is used to spot the jump statement.
NOTE: Remember the use of goto is avoided in programming language because it makes it difficult to trace the control flow of a program, making the program hard to understand and hard to modify.
goto statement Flowchart:
Syntax of goto statement in C
1 2 3 4 | goto label; .... .... label: statement; //label to jump |
Click here for example of goto statement in C.