Using for loops in Go allow you to automate and repeat tasks in an efficient manner.
Learning how to control the operation and flow of loops will allow for customized logic in your program. You can control your loops with the break
and continue
statements.
In Go, the break
statement terminates execution of the current loop. A break
is almost always paired with a conditional if
statement.
Let’s look at an example that uses the break
statement in a for
loop:
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
if i == 5 {
fmt.Println("Breaking out of loop")
break // break here
}
fmt.Println("The value of i is", i)
}
fmt.Println("Exiting program")
}
This small program creates a for
loop that will iterate while i
is less than 10
.
Within the for
loop, there is an if
statement. The if
statement tests the condition of i
to see if the value is less than 5
. If the value of i
is not equal to 5
, the loop continues and prints out the value of i
. If the value of i
is equal to 5
, the loop will execute the break
statement, print that it is Breaking out of loop
, and stop executing the loop. At the end of the program we print out Exiting program
to signify that we have exited the loop.
When we run this code, our output will be the following:
OutputThe value of i is 0
The value of i is 1
The value of i is 2
The value of i is 3
The value of i is 4
Breaking out of loop
Exiting program
This shows that once the integer i
is evaluated as equivalent to 5, the loop breaks, as the program is told to do so with the break
statement.
It is important to remember that the break
statement will only stop the execution of the inner most loop it is called in. If you have a nested set of loops, you will need a break for each loop if desired.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
for outer := 0; outer < 5; outer++ {
if outer == 3 {
fmt.Println("Breaking out of outer loop")
break // break here
}
fmt.Println("The value of outer is", outer)
for inner := 0; inner < 5; inner++ {
if inner == 2 {
fmt.Println("Breaking out of inner loop")
break // break here
}
fmt.Println("The value of inner is", inner)
}
}
fmt.Println("Exiting program")
}
In this program, we have two loops. While both loops iterate 5 times, each has a conditional if
statement with a break
statement. The outer loop will break if the value of outer
equals 3
. The inner loop will break if the value of inner
is 2
.
If we run the program, we can see the output:
OutputThe value of outer is 0
The value of inner is 0
The value of inner is 1
Breaking out of inner loop
The value of outer is 1
The value of inner is 0
The value of inner is 1
Breaking out of inner loop
The value of outer is 2
The value of inner is 0
The value of inner is 1
Breaking out of inner loop
Breaking out of outer loop
Exiting program
Notice that each time the inner loop breaks, the outer loop does not break. This is because break
will only break the inner most loop it is called from.
We have seen how using break
will stop the execution of a loop. Next, let’s look at how we can continue the iteration of a loop.
The continue
statement is used when you want to skip the remaining portion of the loop, and return to the top of the loop and continue a new iteration.
As with the break
statement, the continue
statement is commonly used with a conditional if
statement.
Using the same for
loop program as in the preceding Break Statement section, we’ll use a continue
statement rather than a break
statement:
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
if i == 5 {
fmt.Println("Continuing loop")
continue // break here
}
fmt.Println("The value of i is", i)
}
fmt.Println("Exiting program")
}
The difference in using the continue
statement rather than a break
statement is that our code will continue despite the disruption when the variable i
is evaluated as equivalent to 5
. Let’s look at our output:
OutputThe value of i is 0
The value of i is 1
The value of i is 2
The value of i is 3
The value of i is 4
Continuing loop
The value of i is 6
The value of i is 7
The value of i is 8
The value of i is 9
Exiting program
Here we see that the line The value of i is 5
never occurs in the output, but the loop continues after that point to print lines for the numbers 6-10 before leaving the loop.
You can use the continue
statement to avoid deeply nested conditional code, or to optimize a loop by eliminating frequently occurring cases that you would like to reject.
The continue
statement causes a program to skip certain factors that come up within a loop, but then continue through the rest of the loop.
The break
and continue
statements in Go will allow you to use for
loops more effectively in your code.
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Go (or GoLang) is a modern programming language originally developed by Google that uses high-level syntax similar to scripting languages. It is popular for its minimal syntax and innovative handling of concurrency, as well as for the tools it provides for building native binaries on foreign platforms.
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