5.5.2. The continue Statement

A continue statement terminates the current iteration of the nearest enclosing loop and immediately begins the next iteration. A continue can appear only inside a for, while, or do while loop, including inside statements or blocks nested inside such loops. Like the break statement, a continue inside a nested loop affects only the nearest enclosing loop. Unlike a break, a continue may appear inside a switch only if that switch is embedded inside an iterative statement.

A continue interrupts the current iteration; execution stays inside the loop. In the case of a while or a do while, execution continues by evaluating the condition. In a traditional for loop, execution continues at the expression inside the for header. In a range for, execution continues by initializing the control variable from the next element in the sequence.

For example, the following loop reads the standard input one word at a time. Only words that begin with an underscore will be processed. For any other value, we terminate the current iteration and get the next input:

string buf;
while (cin >> buf && !buf.empty()) {
    if (buf[0] != '_')
        continue; // get another input
    // still here? the input starts with an underscore; process buf . . .
}