BREAK(1) General Commands Manual BREAK(1)

break — exit from for, while, or until loop

break [n]

The break utility shall exit from the smallest enclosing , , or loop, if any; or from the n th 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.

None.

See the DESCRIPTION.

Not used.

None.

None.

Default.

Not used.

The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

None.

None.

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

Default.

None.

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

In early proposals, consideration was given to expanding the syntax of break and continue(1) to refer to a label associated with the appropriate loop as a preferable alternative to the n method. However, this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”) 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.

None.

xcu_chap02(1)

IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”)/Cor 1-2002, item XCU/TC1/D6/5 is applied so that the reference page sections use terms as described in the Utility Description Defaults ( xcu_chap01(1) ). No change in behavior is intended.

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January 1, 2004 posix.fail