7.6 The break and continue statements

The break and continue statements may be placed within loop structures to interrupt their iteration. The break statement terminates execution of the smallest loop currently being executed, and Pyxplot resumes execution at the next statement after the closing brace which marks the end of that loop structure. The continue statement terminates execution of the current iteration of the smallest loop currently being executed, and execution proceeds with the next iteration of that loop, as demonstrated by the following pair of examples:

pyxplot> for i=0 to 4
pyxplot>  {
pyxplot>   if (i==2) { break ; }
pyxplot>   print i
pyxplot>  }
0
1
pyxplot> for i=0 to 4
pyxplot>  {
pyxplot>   if (i==2) { continue ; }
pyxplot>   print i
pyxplot>  }
0
1
3
4

Note that if several loops are nested, the break and continue statements only act on the innermost loop. If either statement is encountered outside of a loop structure, an error results. Optionally, the for, foreach, do and while commands may be supplied with a name for the loop, prefixed by the word loopname, as in the examples:

for i=0 to 4 loopname iloop
...
foreach i in "*.dat" loopname DatafileLoop
...

When loops are given such names, the break and continue statements may be followed by the name of the loop to be broken out of, allowing the user to act on loops other than the innermost one.