Python break, continue, pass: Controlling Loop Flow

You're searching through a phone book for your friend's number. Once you find it, do you keep flipping through every remaining page? Of course not — you stop. Or imagine you're reading a list of emails. You skip the spam and only read the real ones. These are everyday examples of controlling the flow of a loop.

Python gives you three statements to control what happens inside a loop: break (stop the loop entirely), continue (skip to the next iteration), and pass (do nothing, just hold space). This tutorial covers all three, plus Python's unique for-else pattern.

By the end, you'll know exactly when to use each statement and how they change the way your loops behave.

The break statement immediately exits the loop it's inside. Python jumps to the first line of code after the loop. No more iterations, no more condition checks — the loop is done.

Think of break as an emergency exit. The loop has a normal exit (the condition becomes False or the items run out), but break lets you leave early when you've found what you need.

Without break, the loop would check Diana and Eve too — wasted effort since we already found Charlie. The break statement saves time by stopping as soon as the job is done.

The loop stops at 8 because it's the first even number. Even though 2 is also even, the loop never reaches it. This "find the first match and stop" pattern is one of the most common uses of break.

The continue statement skips the rest of the current iteration and jumps back to the top of the loop. The loop itself keeps running — it just moves on to the next item (or checks the condition again for while loops).

If break is an emergency exit, continue is more like a "skip this one" button. You're still going through the loop — you just don't want to process this particular item.

When num is even (2, 4, 6, 8, 10), continue skips the print() and jumps to the next iteration. When num is odd, continue doesn't run, so print() executes normally.

Both versions produce the same output. For this simple example, the if version is fine. But continue really shines when you have many lines of code after the skip condition — it keeps your code flat instead of deeply indented.

Here, continue acts as a filter. Invalid scores (negative or over 100) get skipped, so the calculation lines never run for them. Only valid scores get added to the total. This is cleaner than wrapping all the processing code in a big if block.

The pass statement does absolutely nothing. It's a placeholder that says "I know I need code here, but I haven't written it yet." Python requires at least one statement in any block (after if, for, while, function definitions, etc.), and pass fills that requirement.

Think of pass as a "TODO" sign on a construction site. The building isn't finished yet, but the structure is in place. It tells both Python and other programmers that this is intentionally empty.

Without pass, Python would throw an IndentationError because it expects an indented block after each colon. The pass statement satisfies this requirement while doing nothing.

In this example, pass makes it clear that we're deliberately ignoring non-letter characters. You could leave out the else: pass entirely and the program would work the same way, but including it communicates your intent to other readers.

Python has a unique feature that most other languages don't: you can attach an else block to a for or while loop. The else block runs only if the loop completed normally — meaning it was NOT interrupted by a break.

This is confusing at first because else usually means "if the condition was False." But for loops, think of it as "else no break happened." If the loop finishes all its iterations without hitting break, the else runs.

The loop found 9, so break ran and the else block was skipped. The else only runs when the loop completes without breaking.

This time the loop checked every number and never found 6. Since break never ran, the else block executed. This replaces the common pattern of using a boolean flag like found = False.

The for-else version eliminates the need for a found flag. It's a more Pythonic way to handle "search and report" patterns.

Let's see how these three statements work together in a more realistic example. This code processes a batch of orders and handles different situations.

Order #1 (Laptop) is pending, so it gets processed. Order #2 (Mouse) is shipped, so continue skips it. Order #3 (Keyboard) is cancelled, also skipped. Order #4 (Monitor) is pending, so it gets processed. Order #5 is a STOP command, so break ends the loop entirely. Order #6 never gets reached.

This is the typical pattern: use break for "stop everything" conditions, continue for "skip this one" conditions, and the rest of the loop body for normal processing.

Time to practice controlling loop flow! These exercises will test your understanding of when to use break, continue, and the for-else pattern.

Pay close attention to what each exercise asks for. Using break when you need continue (or vice versa) is a common mistake.

Key rules to remember:

Now you know how to control loop flow with precision. Next up: [Python Nested Loops](/python/python-nested-loops) — where you'll learn to put loops inside loops for working with grids, combinations, and multi-dimensional data. Nested loops combined with break and continue unlock powerful patterns.