Loops, break, and continue

The break keyword can be used to end a loop early. The loop in the following example would continue until the value of $i is 20. break is used to stop the loop when $i reaches 10:

for ($i = 0; $i -lt 20; $i += 2) {
    Write-Host $i 
    if ($i -eq 10) {
        break    # Stop this loop 
    }
}

The break keyword acts on the loop it is nested inside. In the following example, the do loop breaks early—when the variable $i is less than or equal to 2 and variable $k is greater than or equal to 3:

$i = 1 # Initial state for i
do {
    Write-Host "i: $i"
    $k = 1 # Reset k
    while ($k -lt 5) {
        Write-Host "  k: $k"
        $k++ # Increment k
        if ($i -le 2 -and $k -ge 3) {
            break
        }
    }
    $i++ # Increment i
} while ($i -le 3)

The output of the loop is:

i: 1
  k: 1
  k: 2
i: 2
  k: 1
  k: 2
i: 3
  k: 1
  k: 2
  k: 3
  k: 4

The continue keyword may be used to move on to...