continue

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The continue statement terminates execution of the statements in the current iteration of the current or labeled loop, and continues execution of the loop with the next iteration.

Try it

let text = "";

for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  if (i === 3) {
    continue;
  }
  text += i;
}

console.log(text);
// Expected output: "012456789"

Syntax

js
continue;
continue label;

label Optional

Identifier associated with the label of the statement.

Description

In contrast to the break statement, continue does not terminate the execution of the loop entirely, but instead:

In a while or do...while loop, it jumps back to the condition.
In a for loop, it jumps to the update expression.
In a for...in, for...of, or for await...of loop, it jumps to the next iteration.

The continue statement can include an optional label that allows the program to jump to the next iteration of a labeled loop statement instead of the innermost loop. In this case, the continue statement needs to be nested within this labeled statement.

A continue statement, with or without a following label, cannot be used at the top level of a script, module, function's body, or static initialization block, even when the function or class is further contained within a loop.

Examples

Using continue with while

The following example shows a while loop that has a continue statement that executes when the value of i is 3. Thus, n takes on the values 1, 3, 7, and 12.

js
let i = 0;
let n = 0;

while (i < 5) {
  i++;

  if (i === 3) {
    continue;
  }

  n += i;
}

Using continue with a label

In the following example, a statement labeled checkIAndJ contains a statement labeled checkJ. If continue is encountered, the program continues at the top of the checkJ statement. Each time continue is encountered, checkJ reiterates until its condition returns false. When false is returned, the remainder of the checkIAndJ statement is completed.

If continue had a label of checkIAndJ, the program would continue at the top of the checkIAndJ statement.

js
let i = 0;
let j = 8;

checkIAndJ: while (i < 4) {
  console.log(`i: ${i}`);
  i += 1;

  checkJ: while (j > 4) {
    console.log(`j: ${j}`);
    j -= 1;

    if (j % 2 === 0) continue;
    console.log(`${j} is odd.`);
  }
  console.log(`i = ${i}`);
  console.log(`j = ${j}`);
}

Output:

i: 0 // start checkJ j: 8 7 is odd. j: 7 j: 6 5 is odd. j: 5 // end checkJ i = 1 j = 4 i: 1 i = 2 j = 4 i: 2 i = 3 j = 4 i: 3 i = 4 j = 4

Unsyntactic continue statements

continue cannot be used within loops across function boundaries.

js
for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  (() => {
    continue; // SyntaxError: Illegal continue statement: no surrounding iteration statement
  })();
}

When referencing a label, the labeled statement must contain the continue statement.

js
label: for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  console.log(i);
}

for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  continue label; // SyntaxError: Undefined label 'label'
}

The labeled statement must be a loop.

js
label: {
  for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    continue label; // SyntaxError: Illegal continue statement: 'label' does not denote an iteration statement
  }
}