Question

Recently we found a “good way” to comment out lines of code by using continue:

for(int i=0; i<MAX_NUM; i++){
  ....
  .... //--> about 30 lines of code
  continue;
  ....//--> there is about 30 lines of code after continue
  ....
}

I scratch my head by asking why the previous developer put the continue keyword inside the intensive loop. Most probably is he/she feel it’s easier to put a “continue” keyword instead of removing all the unwanted code…

It trigger me another question, by looking at below scenario:

Scenario A:

for(int i=0; i<MAX_NUM; i++){
  ....
  if(bFlag)
    continue;
  ....//--> there is about 100 lines of code after continue
  ....
}

Scenario B:

for(int i=0; i<MAX_NUM; i++){
  ....
  if(!bFlag){
  ....//--> there is about 100 lines of code after continue
  ....
  }
}

Which do you think is the best? Why?
How about break keyword?

Answer 1

Using continue in this case reduces nesting greatly and often makes code more readable.

For example:

for(...) {
    if( condition1 ) {
        Object* pointer = getObject();
        if( pointer != 0 ) {
            ObjectProperty* property = pointer->GetProperty();
            if( property != 0 ) {
        ///blahblahblah...
        }
     }
}

becomes just

for(...) {
    if( !condition1 ) {
        continue;
    }
    Object* pointer = getObject();
    if( pointer == 0 ) {
        continue;
    }
    ObjectProperty* property = pointer->GetProperty();
    if( property == 0 ) {
       continue;
    }

    ///blahblahblah...
}

You see – code becomes linear instead of nested.

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