break statement in C

The break statement in C programming language has following two usage:

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

If you are using nested loops ( ie. one loop inside another loop), 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:

Example:

#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 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