The continue statement in C programming works somewhat like the break statement. Instead of forcing termination, it forces the next iteration of the loop to take place, skipping any code in between.

For the for loop, continue statement causes the conditional test and increment portions of the loop to execute. For the while and do...while loops, continue statement causes the program control to pass to the conditional tests.

Flowchart of continue statement

How to use continue statement

Rules to use continue statement in C programming.

• You must use continue keyword inside a loop. Use of continue outside loop will result in compilation error.
• continue is not used with switch...case statement.
• In case of nested loop, continue will continue next iteration of nearest loop.
• Do not confuse that continue transfer program control to loop condition. It transfer program control to next part of the loop.
• Use of continue statement without condition is worthless. Hence it is often used with if statements.

continue statement skips loop body and continues to next iteration. Below are some working examples of continue statement.

continue statement with for loop

continue statement with while loop

continue statement with do-while loop

Example program to demonstrate continue statement

// Program to calculate the sum of a maximum of 10 numbers
// Negative numbers are skipped from the calculation
# include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int i;
    double number, sum = 0.0;
    for(i=1; i <= 10; ++i)
    {
        printf("Enter a n%d: ",i);
        scanf("%lf",&number);
        if(number < 0.0)
        {
            continue;
        }
        sum += number; // sum = sum + number;
    }
    printf("Sum = %.2lf",sum);
    
    return 0;
}

Output

Enter a n1: 1.1
Enter a n2: 2.2
Enter a n3: 5.5
Enter a n4: 4.4
Enter a n5: -3.4
Enter a n6: -45.5
Enter a n7: 34.5
Enter a n8: -4.2
Enter a n9: -1000
Enter a n10: 12
Sum = 59.70