How to break from nested loops in Ruby?

Question

assume the following ruby code:

bank.branches do |branch|   branch.employees.each do |employee|     NEXT BRANCH if employee.name = "John Doe"   end end 

NEXT BRANCH is of course pseudocode. is there a way that i can break out of a parent loop, the way one can do so in Perl, for example (by employing loop labels)?

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Catch and throw might be what you are looking for:

bank.branches do |branch|   catch :missingyear do  #:missingyear acts as a label     branch.employees.each do |employee|       (2000..2011).each do |year|         throw :missingyear unless something  #break out of two loops       end     end   end #You end up here if :missingyear is thrown end 

Answer 2

There's no built-in way to break out of containing blocks without their consent. You'll just have to do something like:

bank.branches do |branch|   break unless branch.employees.each do |employee|     break if employee.name == "John Doe"   end end