PHP continue

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn to use the PHP continue statement to skip the current iteration and start the next one.

Introduction to the PHP continue statement

The continue statement is used within a loop structure such as for, do...while, and while loop. The continue statement allows you to immediately skip all the statements that follow it and start the next iteration from the beginning.

Like the break statement, the continue statement also accepts an optional number that specifies the number of levels of enclosing loops it will skip.

If you don’t specify the number that follows the continue keyword, it defaults to 1. In this case, the continue statement only skips to the end of the current iteration.

Typically, you use the continue statement with the if statement that specifies the condition for skipping the current iteration.

PHP continue example

The following example illustrates how to use the continue statement inside a for loop:

<?php

for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
	if ($i % 2 === 0) {
		continue;
	}
	echo "$i\n";
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Output:

1
3
5
7
9

How it works.

• First, use a for loop to iterate from 0 to 9.
• Second, skip the current echo statement if $i is an even number. The $i is an even number when the $i % 2 returns 0. As a result, the output shows only the odd numbers.

Summary

• Use the continue statement to skip all the statements that follow it and start the next iteration from the beginning.