Infinite while loop with continue keyword

Question

My problem - and I don't know why there is a keyword continue , which should leave the value of 3 and go further. In fact, I have a loop that is infinite - that is, it crashes the program.

tab = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]
i = 0
while i < len(tab):
    print(tab[i])
    if tab[i] == 3:
        continue
    i+=1

Answer 1

It looks like you are trying to iterate through the list until you find a 3 then break . Do something like this:

items = [1,2,3,4,5]
for item in items:
   if item == 3:
       break

The keyword continue will pass to the next iteration of the loop, where break will stop the loop.

Answer 2

The continue keyword continues with the next iteration of the loop.

In your case, it prevents the statement i+=1 to be executed.

Here is what happens:

1. Loops through 0,1,2 just fine
2. When it evaluates tab[i] = 3 it proceeds with the next iteration of the loop and i+=1 is never executed, hence i remains 3 and never gets incremented. It keeps doing this forever.

If you want to exit the loop, you can use the break statement instead of continue .

For more information, you can read on the continue keyword here: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html

Answer 3

You're using the continue keyword, but I think you want break .

Your code is running forever because i never iterates past 3. Once i == 4 , it enters your if statement and continues the loop. Since it continues, it never iterates after that.

Answer 4

I think the answers here all assume that OP wanted to use break instead of continue .

However, if you need to use continue in a while loop, make sure you have an increment/decrement operation above the continue statement, because the continue statement jumps to the top of the while loop and, in your case, i remains 3.

Respectively, the continue statement in a do-while loop jumps to the bottom of the loop. So, in your case you have two options, either you increment above the continue or use a for-loop.

tab = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]
i = -1
while i < len(tab):
    i += 1
    print(tab[i])
    if tab[i] == 3:
        continue
    

OR

for i in range(0,15):
    if i == 3:
       continue
    print(i)

Answer 5

Because you are using the continue keyword that skips the rest of the code. Once i reaches 3, it skips over the i+=1 command. It appears that you want to use the keyword break . You could also do:

for i in tab:
    print(i)
    if i == 3:
        break