6.7 continue Statement

The continue statement is similar to the break statement, except that instead of terminating the loop, it starts re-executing the body of the loop from the top. For example, let's modify the previous program to total only numbers larger than 0. This means that when you see a negative number, you want to skip the rest of the loop. To do this you need an if to check for negative numbers and a continue to restart the loop. The result is Example 6-3.

Example 6-3. total2/total2.cpp

#include <iostream>

int   total;       // Running total of all numbers so far 
int   item;        // next item to add to the list
int   minus_items; // number of negative items 

int main(  )
{
    total = 0;
    minus_items = 0;
    while (true) {
        std::cout << "Enter # to add\n";
        std::cout << "  or 0 to stop:";
        std::cin >> item;

        if (item == 0)
            break;

        if (item < 0) {
            ++minus_items;
            continue;
        }
        total += item;
        std::cout << "Total: " << total << '\n';
    }

    std::cout << "Final total " << total << '\n';
    std::cout << "with " << minus_items << " negative items omitted\n";
    return (0);
}