break statement in C Language

The break statement in C programming has the following two usages −

  • When a break statement is encountered inside a loop, the loop is immediately terminated and the program control resumes at the next statement following the loop.
  • It can be used to terminate a case in the switch statement (covered in the next chapter).

If you are using nested loops, the break statement will stop the execution of the innermost loop and start executing the next line of code after the block.

Syntax

The syntax for a break statement in C is as follows −

break;

Flow Diagram

c break statement

Example

Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main () {

   /* local variable definition */
   int a = 10;

   /* while loop execution */
   while( a < 20 ) {
   
      printf("value of a: %d\n", a);
      a++;
		
      if( a > 15) {
         /* terminate the loop using break statement */
         break;
      }
   }
 
   return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

value of a: 10
value of a: 11
value of a: 12
value of a: 13
value of a: 14
value of a: 15
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