The break
statement, like in C, breaks out of the smallest
enclosing for
or while
loop.
The continue
statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the
next iteration of the loop.
Loop statements may have an else
clause; it is executed when the
loop terminates through exhaustion of the list (with for
) or when
the condition becomes false (with while
), but not when the loop is
terminated by a break
statement. This is exemplified by the
following loop, which searches for prime numbers:
>>> for n in range(2, 10): ... for x in range(2, n): ... if n % x == 0: ... print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x ... break ... else: ... print n, 'is a prime number' ... 2 is a prime number 3 is a prime number 4 equals 2 * 2 5 is a prime number 6 equals 2 * 3 7 is a prime number 8 equals 2 * 4 9 equals 3 * 3 >>>