Programming Tutorials

break in Mac OS X

By: Strauss K Printer Friendly Format    

Exit from a for, while, until or select loop.

Syntax
      break [n]

If n is specified, break n levels.

n must be >= 1. If n is greater than the number of enclosing loops, all enclosing loops are exited.

The return value is 0 unless the shell is not executing a loop when break is executed.

Example

for i in 1 2 3 4 5
do echo -n "Hello World${i} "
  if [ "$i" -eq 3 ] 
   then 
   break # This line will break out of the loop
  fi
done

break is a builtin command.