How to use the 'break' and 'next' statements in Ruby?

break Statement in Ruby

In Ruby, we use the break statement in order to make sure that we exit a certain loop after a condition. For example, suppose we want to print the numbers from 1 to 10, but once we hit the number 5, we just don't want the loop to print any numbers that come after it. In such a case, we can use the break statement.

Example 1

Let's take an example and understand how the break statement works in Ruby. Consider the code shown below.

# break statement in Ruby #!/usr/bin/ruby -w itr = 1 # while Loop while true    puts itr * 5    itr += 1    if itr * 3 >= 25       # Break Statement       break    end end

Output

It will produce the following output −

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Example 2

Let's take another example. Consider the code shown below.

# break statement in Ruby #!/usr/bin/ruby -w itr = 0    # Using while    while true do       puts itr       itr += 1    # Using Break Statement    break if itr > 5 end

Output

It will produce the following output −

0 1 2 3 4 5

next Statement in Ruby

The next statement is used to skip a particular iteration of a loop. For example, let's say that we want to print the numbers from 1 to 7, but do not want to print the number 5. In such a case, we can use the next statement.

Example 3

Let's take an example to demonstrate how it works. Consider the code shown below.

# next statement in Ruby #!/usr/bin/ruby -w for x in 0..5    if x+1 < 3 then       # next statement       next    end    puts "x contains : #{x}" end

Output

It will produce the following output −

x contains : 2 x contains : 3 x contains : 4 x contains : 5

Example 4

Let's take another example. Consider the code shown below.

for i in 6...13    if i == 8 then       next    end    puts i end

Output

On execution, we will get the following output −

6 7 9 10 11 12