Why is continue inside a loop a bad idea?

Question

Douglas Crockfod says that it is usually better to refactor the continue inside the loop.

Why is continue considered bad within a loop?

Answer 1

The use of continue would mean that you have insufficient conditions written in your while.

You should instead use if inside your while loop, or add the condition into the while loop.

Answer 2

Using goto, break, continue, throw, or return inside the loop body can all have the un-desired effect as well. Here's another example where the loop control and the loop body are tightly interwoven. Does it write 1, 2, and 3 as before? Are you sure?

int value = 1;
    for (;;++value)
    {
        cout << value << endl;
        if (value != 4)
            continue;
        else
            break;
    }

You might be thinking that advising you not to use return statements inside loop bodies is over zealous. Do I really mean that? Yes I do. Functions that return something should do so via a single return statement at the very end of the function. Here are some practical reasons why:

Link

Disclaimer: Not my material, I have referenced back to the source

Answer 3

The effect of continue is somehow comparable to a goto to the begin of the loop. It therefore makes your code more difficult to understand - like gotos.