freeCodeCamp/guide/english/java/loops/continue-control-statement/index.md

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Continue Control Statement

Continue Control Statement

The continue statement makes a loop skip all the following lines after the continue and jump ahead to the beginning of the next iteration. In a for loop, control jumps to the update statement, and in a while or do while loop, control jumps to the boolean expression/condition.

for (int j = 0; j < 10; j++)
{
    if (j == 5)
    {
        continue;
    }
    System.out.print (j + " ");
}

The value of j will be printed for each iteration, except when it is equal to 5. The print statement will get skipped because of the continue and the output will be:

0 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9

Say you want to count the number of is in a the word mississippi. Here you could use a loop with the continue statement, as follows:

String searchWord = "mississippi";

// max stores the length of the string
int max = searchWord.length();
int numPs = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
{
    // We only want to count i's - skip other letters
    if (searchWord.charAt(i) != 'i')
    {
        continue;
    }

    // Increase count_i for each i encountered
    numPs++;
}

System.out.println("numPs = " + numPs);

Run Code

Additionally, you can use labels to choose a specific loop out of a nested set to skip to the next iteration.