Continue and Break

We briefly saw break in Chapter II where it was used to exit an infinite while true loop. Let’s look at break and its counterpart continue in more detail.

Break

The break command immediately stops the current loop and moves execution to the first command after the loop:

int i
for i = 1 to 100
    if i == 6
    then
        break
    end
    print_formatted_now "i = %d" 500 i
    wait 500
end

// execution continues here after break
print_string_now "Loop stopped" 2000

This displays values 1 through 5. When i becomes 6, the break command exits the loop and the script displays "Loop stopped". It works the same way in while and for loops.

Continue

The continue command skips the rest of the current iteration and moves on to the next one:

int i
for i = 1 to 5
    if i == 3
    then
        continue
    end
    print_formatted_now "i = %d" 500 i
    wait 500
end

This displays 1, 2, 4, 5. The value 3 is skipped because continue jumps to the next iteration before print_formatted_now is reached.

Practical Example

Here is a more practical use of break. This script gives the player money every second, but stops early if the F6 key is pressed:

const KEY_F6 = 117

int i
for i = 1 to 10
    if is_key_pressed KEY_F6
    then
        break
    end
    add_score 0 100
    print_formatted_now "+$100 (round %d of 10)" 1000 i
    wait 1000
end

Without break, the only way to achieve this would be a while loop with a more complex condition. break gives you a clean way to exit early when something unexpected happens.