Continue

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Kotlin journey. Lesson 50 of 93.

While break exits a loop entirely, sometimes you only want to skip the current iteration and move on to the next one. The continue statement does exactly that.

When continue executes, the loop immediately jumps to the next iteration, skipping any remaining code in the current cycle:

for (i in 1..5) {
    if (i == 3) {
        continue
    }
    println(i)
}
// Output:
// 1
// 2
// 4
// 5

Notice that 3 is missing from the output. When i equals 3, continue skips the println and moves directly to i = 4.

This is useful when you want to filter out certain values without stopping the entire loop. For example, printing only even numbers:

for (num in 1..6) {
    if (num % 2 != 0) {
        continue
    }
    println(num)
}
// Output:
// 2
// 4
// 6

The key difference: break stops the loop completely, while continue only skips to the next iteration.

Challenge

Medium

Read an integer n from input. Use a for loop to print all numbers from 1 to n, but skip any number that is divisible by 3.

Use the continue statement to skip the numbers divisible by 3.

For example, if the input is 10, the output should be:

Notice that 3, 6, and 9 are missing because they are divisible by 3.

Try it yourself

fun main() {
    // Read input
    val n = readLine()!!.toInt()
    
    // TODO: Write your code below
    // Use a for loop to print numbers from 1 to n
    // Skip numbers divisible by 3 using the continue statement
    
}

Test yourself

This lesson includes a short quiz. Start the lesson to answer it and track your progress.

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