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10.6 The break Statement

The break statement jumps out of the innermost for or while loop that encloses it. The break statement may only be used within the body of a loop. The following example finds the smallest divisor of a given integer, and also identifies prime numbers:

num = 103;
div = 2;
while (div*div <= num)
  if (rem (num, div) == 0)
    break;
  endif
  div++;
endwhile
if (rem (num, div) == 0)
  printf ("Smallest divisor of %d is %d\n", num, div)
else
  printf ("%d is prime\n", num);
endif

When the remainder is zero in the first while statement, Octave immediately breaks out of the loop. This means that Octave proceeds immediately to the statement following the loop and continues processing. (This is very different from the exit statement which stops the entire Octave program.)

Here is another program equivalent to the previous one. It illustrates how the condition of a while statement could just as well be replaced with a break inside an if:

num = 103;
div = 2;
while (1)
  if (rem (num, div) == 0)
    printf ("Smallest divisor of %d is %d\n", num, div);
    break;
  endif
  div++;
  if (div*div > num)
    printf ("%d is prime\n", num);
    break;
  endif
endwhile