`continue`

continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration and continue execution at the beginning of the next iteration.

Note: Note that in PHP the switch statement is considered a looping structure for the purposes of continue.

continue accepts an optional numeric argument which tells it how many levels of enclosing loops it should skip to the end of.

<?php
while (list($key, $value)
= each($arr)) {

    if (!($key % 2)) { // skip odd members

        continue;

    }

    do_something_odd($value);

}


$i = 0;

while ($i++ < 5) {

    echo "Outer<br />\n";

    while (1) {

        echo "&nbsp;&nbsp;Middle<br />\n";

        while (1) {

            echo "&nbsp;&nbsp;Inner<br />\n";

            continue 3;

        }

        echo "This never gets output.<br />\n";

    }

    echo "Neither does this.<br />\n";

}
?>

Omitting the semicolon after continue can lead to confusion. Here's an example of what you shouldn't do.

<?php

  for ($i = 0; $i < 5; ++$i) {

      if ($i == 2)

          continue

      print "$i\n";

  }
?>

One can expect the result to be :

but this script will output :

because the return value of the print() call is int(1), and it will look like the optional numeric argument mentioned above.