C++ Break Statement

The break in C++ is a loop control statement that is used to terminate the loop. As soon as the break statement is encountered from within a loop, the loop iterations stop there and control returns from the loop immediately to the first statement after the loop.

Example: Using break with simple loops

1 2 3 4 5 

Explanation:

• The for loop starts printing numbers from 1.
• When the value of i becomes 6, the break statement stops the loop immediately.
• Therefore, only numbers 1 to 5 are printed.

How does break work?

Steps:

• for loop starts running and repeats while its condition is true.
• When the if condition becomes true, the break statement is executed.
• break immediately stops the loop and moves the program outside the loop.

Flowchart of break Statement

Break with Nested Loops

We can also use break statements while working with nested loops. If the break statement is used in the innermost loop. The control will come out only from the innermost loop. 

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Explanation:

• The inner loop is defined for 10 iterations.
• When j > 3, the break statement is executed.
• This causes the inner loop to terminate early after 3 iterations.
• The outer loop continues unaffected.
• Hence, break terminates only the loop in which it is placed.

Break with Infinite Loops

The break statement can be included in an infinite loop with a condition in order to terminate the execution of the infinite loop.

Output:

Execution timed out

Note: Please do not run the above program in your compiler as it is an infinite loop so you may have to forcefully exit the compiler to terminate the program.

In the above program, the loop condition based on which the loop terminates is always true. So, the loop executes an infinite number of times. We can correct this by using the break statement as shown below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Explanation: The above code restricts the number of loop iterations to 10. Apart from this, the break can be used in Switch case statements too.