BREAK and CONTINUE a loop

No, there is no Continue in VB.NET 2003. However, I heard that it is coming back in 2005. :) Along with some other sorely missed features. :)

http://msmvps.com/bill/archive/2004/06/19/8458.aspx

http://blogs.vbcity.com/mcintyre/archive/2004/08/03/151.aspx

However, you can simulate it by something like this:

        For Counter As Integer = 1 To 10
            If Counter = 5 Then Exit For
            If Counter = 3 Then GoTo MyContinue
            MessageBox.Show(Counter)
MyContinue:
        Next

This will count 1, 2, 4 and be done.

From: http://www.codeproject.com/vb/net/vb2005ga.asp

It’s about darn time! Finally VB has a Continue statement that can be used to jump to the next iteration of a loop rather than having to wrap loop logic within conditional statements. Furthermore, it’s also possible to specify which loop is to be jumped to! Cool! Indeed the wait has been worth it.

Check out the following piece of dummy code:

For i As Integer = 0 To 10
    While True
        If someCondition Then
            Continue While
        ElseIf someOtherCondition Then
            Continue For
        End If
        Do
            If someCondition Then
                Continue Do
            ElseIf someOtherCondition Then
                Continue While
            Else
                Continue For
            End If
        Loop While someOtherCondition
    End While
    If someCondition Then
        Continue For
    End If
Next

Here we have three loops, a For loop, a While loop nested within the For loop, and a Do loop nested within the While loop.

+ Within the For loop we jump (Continue For) to the next iteration of the same For loop if some condition is met.

+ Within the While loop we jump (Continue While) to the next iteration of the same While loop if some condition is met. If some other condition is met we jump (Continue For) to the next iteration of the outer For loop.

+ Within the Do loop we jump (Continue Do) to the next iteration of the same Do loop if some condition is met. If some other condition is met we jump (Continue While) to the next iteration of the outer While loop. Otherwise, we jump (Continue For) to the next iteration of the outer While loop’s outer For loop (I’m getting tired).

Now is that cool or is that awesome! In the words of Keanu Reeves: Wow!