Using the Continue Statement in JavaScript: Syntax and Examples

The continue statement breaks one iteration (in the loop) if a specified condition occurs, and continues with the next iteration in the loop.

The difference between continue and the break statement, is instead of "jumping out" of a loop, the continue statement "jumps over" one iteration in the loop.

However, when the continue statement is executed, it behaves differently for different types of loops:

• In a while loop, the condition is tested, and if it is true, the loop is executed again
• In a for loop, the increment expression (e.g. i++) is first evaluated, and then the condition is tested to find out if another iteration should be done

The continue statement can also be used with an optional label reference.

Note: The continue statement (with or without a label reference) can only be used inside a loop.

Example

In this example we use a for loop together with the continue statement.

Loop through a block of code, but skip the value of "3":

var text = ""
var i;
for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
  if (i === 3) {
    continue;
  }
  text += "The number is " + i + "<br>";
}