BREAK(1P)

PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
break — exit from for, while, or until loop

SYNOPSIS

break [n]

DESCRIPTION
The break utility shall exit from the smallest enclosing for, while, or until loop, if any; or from the nth enclosing loop if n is specified. The value of n is an unsigned decimal integer greater than or equal to 1. The default shall be equivalent to n=1. If n is greater than the number of enclosing loops, the outermost enclosing loop shall be exited. Execution shall continue with the command immediately following the loop.

OPTIONS
None.

OPERANDS
See the DESCRIPTION.

STDIN
Not used.

INPUT FILES
None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
None.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.

STDOUT
Not used.

STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.

EXIT STATUS

0   Successful completion.

>0  The n value was not an unsigned decimal integer greater than or equal to 1.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.

The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
None.

EXAMPLES

for i in *
do
    if test -d "$i"
    then break
    fi
done

RATIONALE
In early proposals, consideration was given to expanding the syntax of break and continue to refer to a label associated with the appropriate loop as a preferable alternative to the n method. However, this volume of POSIX.1-2008 does reserve the name space of command names ending with a <colon>. It is anticipated that a future implementation could take advantage of this and provide something like:

    outofloop: for i in a b c d e
    do
        for j in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
        do
            if test -r "${i}${j}"
            then break outofloop
            fi
        done
    done

and that this might be standardized after implementation experience is achieved.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.

SEE ALSO
Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities

COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html . Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .