The JavaScript exception "continue must be inside loop" occurs when acontinue statement is not inside a loop statement.

Message

SyntaxError: Illegal continue statement: no surrounding iteration statement (V8-based)SyntaxError: Illegal continue statement: 'label' does not denote an iteration statement (V8-based)SyntaxError: continue must be inside loop (Firefox)SyntaxError: 'continue' is only valid inside a loop statement. (Safari)SyntaxError: Cannot continue to the label 'label' as it is not targeting a loop. (Safari)

Error type

SyntaxError.

What went wrong?

continue statements can be used to continue a loop, and using them elsewhere is a syntax error. Alternatively, you can provide alabel to thecontinue statement to continue any loop with that label — however, if the label does not reference a containing statement, another errorSyntaxError: label not found will be thrown, and if the label references a statement that is not a loop, a syntax error is still thrown.

Examples

Using continue in callbacks

If you want to proceed with the next iteration in aforEach() loop, usereturn instead, or convert it to afor...of loop.

array.forEach((value) => {  if (value === 5) {    continue; // SyntaxError: continue must be inside loop  }  // do something with value});

array.forEach((value) => {  if (value === 5) {    return;  }  // do something with value});

for (const value of array) {  if (value === 5) {    continue;  }  // do something with value}

See also

• continue