How does a programmer get more direct control over a loop? With the break and continue keywords!

The break keyword allows the programmer to stop the loop at the current iteration.

For example, if using a loop to search for a specific pet, the loop can be made to break and stop when that animal has been found:

animals := []string{"Cat", "Dog", "Fish", "Turtle"}
for index := 0; index < len(animals); index++ {
  if animals[index] == "Dog" {
    fmt.Println("Found the perfect animal!")
    break // Stop searching the array
  }
}

The continue keyword works similarly, allowing the loop to skip to the next iteration.

For example, there may be an array filled with jellybeans. To not eat the disgusting green jellybeans, a continue statement can be used to skip them:

jellybeans := []string{"green", "blue", "yellow", "red", "green", "yellow", "red"}
for index := 0; index < len(jellybeans); index++ {
  if jellybeans[index] == "green" {
    continue
  }
  fmt.Println("You ate the", jellybeans[index], "jellybean!")
}

However, using continue and break statements tend to cause confusion over how a loop will behave. A break statement changes when a loop will end. While a continue statement changes what will happen in each loop.

While these keywords may not always be the best choice, they work really well for the use case covered in the next exercise, iterating through arrays and maps!