Continue built-in
The continue built-in skips the execution of a loop to the next iteration.
Synopsis
continue [n]
Description
continue n interrupts the execution of the nth innermost for, while, or until loop and resumes its next iteration. The specified loop must lexically enclose the continue command, that is:
- The loop is running in the same execution environment as the continue command; and
- The continue command appears inside the condition or body of the loop but not in the body of a function definition command appearing inside the loop.
It is an error if there is no loop enclosing the continue command. If n is greater than the number of enclosing loops, the built-in affects the outermost one.
If the affected loop is a for loop, the loop variable is updated to the next value in the list. The loop ends if there are no more values to iterate over.
If the affected loop is a while or until loop, the condition is re-evaluated.
Options
None.
Operands
Operand n specifies the nest level of the affected loop. If omitted, it defaults to 1. It is an error if the value is not a positive decimal integer.
Exit status
Zero if the built-in successfully continues the loop; non-zero otherwise.
Examples
See Break and continue.
Compatibility
The continue built-in is specified by POSIX.1-2024.
The behavior is unspecified in POSIX when the continue built-in is used without an enclosing loop, in which case the current implementation returns an error.
POSIX allows the built-in to restart a loop running in the current execution environment that does not lexically enclose the continue command. Our implementation declines to do that.
In some shells, the continue built-in lacks support for the -- separator.
Previous versions of yash supported the non-standard -i option, but this is not yet supported in yash-rs.