Jumping Statements in C

Jumping statements are used to alter the normal flow of program execution in loops or conditional blocks.

• They help manage the execution flow by skipping iterations, exiting loops, or stopping the program.

C provides three primary jumping statements:

• break Statement
• continue Statement
• goto Statement
• return Statement

1.) break Statement

The break statement is used to exit from a loop or a switch statement prematurely. It stops the execution of the loop or switch and transfers control to the next statement outside of the loop.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        if (i == 5) {
            break; // exit loop when i equals 5
        }
        printf("%d\n", i);
    }
    return 0;
}

2.) continue Statement

The continue statement is used to skip the current iteration of a loop and move on to the next iteration. It does not terminate the loop; it just skips the code below it for the current iteration.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        if (i == 3) {
            continue; // skip printing when i equals 3
        }
        printf("%d\n", i);
    }
    return 0;
}

3.) goto Statement:

The goto statement allows you to jump to another part of the program by using a label. Although powerful, it’s generally discouraged due to reduced code readability.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    int i = 0;
    while (i < 10) {
        if (i == 5)
            goto skip;
        printf("%d\n", i);
        i++;
    }

skip:
    printf("Skipped when i = 5\n");
    return 0;
}

4.) return Statement:

The return statement is used to exit from a function and optionally return a value to the calling function.

• Once return is executed, the control is passed back to the caller, and the remaining code in the function (if any) is skipped.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>

// Function that returns an integer
int add(int a, int b) {
    return a + b;  // return sum to main
}

int main() {
    int result = add(5, 3);
    printf("Sum = %d\n", result);
    return 0;
}