Three small keywords change how loops behave. They look similar but do very different things.

break — exit the loop early

break jumps out of the current loop immediately, skipping the rest of the iteration and any remaining iterations:

for n in range(1, 11):
    if n == 5:
        break
    print(n)

1
2
3
4

When n becomes 5, the break runs and the loop ends. Numbers 5 through 10 are never printed.

break is most useful for searching:

numbers: list[int] = [3, 7, 12, 4, 18, 9]
target: int = 12
found_at: int = -1

for index, value in enumerate(numbers):
    if value == target:
        found_at = index
        break

if found_at >= 0:
    print(f"Found {target} at index {found_at}")
else:
    print(f"{target} not in list")

We stop as soon as we find the target — no need to keep checking the rest.

continue — skip to the next iteration

continue skips the rest of the current loop body and moves on to the next iteration:

for n in range(1, 11):
    if n % 2 == 0:
        continue
    print(n)

1
3
5
7
9

For each even n, the continue runs and print(n) is skipped.

continue is useful when you want to filter items inside a loop:

scores: list[int] = [45, 78, 32, 91, 50, 25]
passing: list[int] = []

for score in scores:
    if score < 50:
        continue
    passing.append(score)

print(passing)   # [78, 91, 50]

Often a list comprehension (Section 6) is even cleaner — but continue keeps explicit loops readable.

break vs continue

break    — leave the loop entirely
continue — skip the rest of this iteration, do the next one

A picture helps:

for i in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
    if i == 3:
        break          # → loop ends, prints 1, 2
    print(i)

for i in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
    if i == 3:
        continue       # → skips 3, prints 1, 2, 4, 5
    print(i)

pass — do nothing

We met pass in the if/elif/else lesson. It’s a placeholder that does literally nothing. Useful when Python’s syntax requires a block but you haven’t written one yet:

for n in range(5):
    if n == 2:
        pass   # TODO: handle this case
    else:
        print(n)

It’s also the standard “empty function” body:

def not_implemented_yet() -> None:
    pass

Don’t confuse pass with continue:

• pass does nothing and lets the next line in the block run normally.
• continue stops the current iteration and jumps to the next.

for/else and while/else (advanced)

Python has a feature that surprises most people coming from other languages — loops can have an else clause. The else runs only if the loop finishes without hitting break:

numbers: list[int] = [1, 2, 3, 4]
target: int = 7

for n in numbers:
    if n == target:
        print(f"Found {target}")
        break
else:
    print(f"{target} not in list")

If the target was in the list, break runs and else is skipped. If the loop completes without break, else runs.

It’s a useful pattern, but most Python developers forget it exists. Don’t worry about memorising it — just recognise it if you see it in real code.

What’s next

You can break out of loops, skip iterations, and write empty placeholder blocks. Next, a closer look at range() and what it means for something to be iterable.