ABAP continue

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the ABAP continue statement to skip the current iteration of a loop.

Introduction to ABAP continue statement

The continue statement skips the current iteration of a loop such as a do loop or a while loop:

continue.

Typically, you use the continue statement in conjunction with an if statement.

The following illustrates how to use the continue statement in a do loop:

do n times.
   if condition.
      continue.
   endif.
   " other code
enddo.

In this syntax, the continue statement will start a new loop iteration immediately. It ignores all the code below the continue between do and enddo.

Similarly, the following shows how to use the continue statement in a while loop:

while condition.
   if another_condition.
      continue.
   endif.
   " other code
endwhile.

When you use continue statement in a nested loop, it skips the current iteration of the innermost loop.

ABAP continue statement examples

The following example uses the continue statement to skip outputting odd numbers to the screen:

do 10 times.
  if sy-index mod 2 = 1.
    continue.
  endif.
  write / sy-index.
enddo.

Output:

 2
 4
 6
 8
10

How it works.

• First, execute the code block 10 times using the do statement.
• Second, get the remainder of the division of the current loop index (sy-index) and 2. If the remainder is 1, skip outputting the current loop index.

Summary

• Use the continue statement to skip the current loop iteration and start a new one.