Section 8.8. continue Statement

8.8. continue Statement

Core Note: continue statements

Whether in Python, C, Java, or any other structured language that features the continue statement, there is a misconception among some beginning programmers that the traditional continue statement "immediately starts the next iteration of a loop." While this may seem to be the apparent action, we would like to clarify this somewhat invalid supposition. Rather than beginning the next iteration of the loop when a continue statement is encountered, a continue statement terminates or discards the remaining statements in the current loop iteration and goes back to the top. If we are in a conditional loop, the conditional expression is checked for validity before beginning the next iteration of the loop. Once confirmed, then the next iteration begins. Likewise, if the loop were iterative, a determination must be made as to whether there are any more arguments to iterate over. Only when that validation has completed successfully can we begin the next iteration.

The continue statement in Python is not unlike the traditional continue found in other high-level languages. The continue statement can be used in both while and for loops. The while loop is conditional, and the for loop is iterative, so using continue is subject to the same requirements (as highlighted in the Core Note above) before the next iteration of the loop can begin. Otherwise, the loop will terminate normally.

valid = False count = 3 while count > 0:     input = raw_input("enter password")     # check for valid passwd     for eachPasswd in passwdList:         if input == eachPasswd:             valid = True             break     if not valid:    # (or valid == 0)         print "invalid input"         count -= 1         continue     else:         break

In this combined example using while, for, if, break, and continue, we are looking at validating user input. The user is given three opportunities to enter the correct password; otherwise, the valid variable remains a false value of 0, which presumably will result in appropriate action being taken soon after.