PowerShell – Break vs. Continue Usage

For this example, we create two ArrayList objects and add a couple ints to them to run a loop to see if the value matches between the two and either continues a loop or breaks out of a loop:

$arraylist1 = New-Object -TypeName System.Collections.ArrayList
$arraylist1.Add(1) | Out-Null
$arraylist1.Add(2) | Out-Null
$arraylist1.Add(3) | Out-Null
$arraylist2 = New-Object -TypeName System.Collections.ArrayList
$arraylist2.Add(1) | Out-Null
$arraylist2.Add(2) | Out-Null
$arraylist2.Add(3) | Out-Null

Sample code for ‘continue’:

foreach ($item in $arraylist1)
{
    Write-Output -InputObject "item is: $item"
    foreach ($subitem in $arraylist2)
    {
        Write-Output -InputObject "subitem is: $subitem"
        if ($item -eq $subitem)
        {
            Write-Output -InputObject "$item matches $subitem! Continuing!"
            continue
        }
    }
}

…Which outputs:

item is: 1
subitem is: 1
1 matches 1! Continuing!
subitem is: 2
subitem is: 3
item is: 2
subitem is: 1
subitem is: 2
2 matches 2! Continuing!
subitem is: 3
item is: 3
subitem is: 1
subitem is: 2
subitem is: 3
3 matches 3! Continuing!

Sample code for ‘break’:

foreach ($item in $arraylist1)
{
    Write-Output -InputObject "item is: $item"
    foreach ($subitem in $arraylist2)
    {
        Write-Output -InputObject "subitem is: $subitem"
        if ($item -eq $subitem)
        {
            Write-Output -InputObject "$item matches $subitem! Breaking!"
            break
        }
    }
}

…which outputs:

item is: 1
subitem is: 1
1 matches 1! Breaking!
item is: 2
subitem is: 1
subitem is: 2
2 matches 2! Breaking!
item is: 3
subitem is: 1
subitem is: 2
subitem is: 3
3 matches 3! Breaking!

What can you use this for or when should I use what one? It depends on your use case. 🙂