Question

I noticed you can indeed use the continue keyword in a switch statement, but on PHP it doesn’t do what I expected.

If it fails with PHP, who knows how many other languages it fails too? If I switch between languages a lot, this can be a problem if the code doesn’t behave like I expect it to behave.

Should I just avoid using continue in a switch statement then?

PHP (5.2.17) fails:

for($p = 0; $p < 8; $p++){
    switch($p){
        case 5:
            print"($p)";
            continue;
            print"*"; // just for testing...
        break;
        case 6:
            print"($p)";
            continue;
            print"*";
        break;
    }
    print"$p\r\n";
}
/*
Output:
0
1
2
3
4
(5)5
(6)6
7
*/

C++ seems to work as expected (jumps to end of for loop):

for(int p = 0; p < 8; p++){
    switch(p){
        case 5:
            cout << "(" << p << ")";
            continue;
            cout << "*"; // just for testing...
        break;
        case 6:
            cout << "(" << p << ")";
            continue;
            cout << "*";
        break;
    }
    cout << p << "\r\n";
}
/*
Output:
0
1
2
3
4
(5)(6)7
*/

Answer 1

PHP 7.3 or newer:

Using continue to break a switch statement is deprecated and will trigger a warning.

To exit a switch statement, use break.

To continue to the next iteration of a loop that’s surrounding the current switch statement, use continue 2.

PHP 7.2 or older:

continue and break may be used interchangeably in PHP’s switch statements.