An indefinite loop, also known as an loop, is a type of loop that continues to execute indefinitely as long as a certain condition remains . It's important to exercise caution when using indefinite loops, as they can potentially lead to your program becoming unresponsive or crashing if not managed properly. The syntax commonly used for an indefinite loop in Python is "while True:". For example, within this structure, the program can continuously prompt the user for input until a termination condition is met, such as entering the word 'exit'.
The statement in Python is used to exit a loop prematurely. When the break statement is encountered within a loop (such as for or while), the loop immediately , and the program continues executing the code after the loop. This allows for greater control over the flow of the program. For instance, in a while loop, code can be designed to run until a specific condition is satisfied, at which point the break statement will stop the loop. Similarly, in a for loop, the break statement can terminate the loop based on a condition being met, ensuring your program behaves as expected.
In contrast to the break statement, a continue statement is used to skip the remaining instructions within a loop and proceed to the next iteration. This is particularly useful in scenarios where certain conditions warrant the termination of the current iteration without exiting the loop entirely. For example, in a for loop that iterates through a range of numbers, the continue statement can be employed to skip over elements that fulfill a specific condition, such as being even, allowing only the desired values to proceed to the subsequent operations. This highlights the utility of both break and continue statements in managing loop behavior effectively.
