continue

continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration and continue execution at 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.

<?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;&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 :

2

because the return value of the print() call is int(1), and it will look like the optional numeric argument mentioned above.