Using CONTINUE in loops, new feature 11g

In ancient history I did a lot of programming in C (Cbreeze to be exact) which had embedded SQL inside C code. As with any database processing you tend to do a lot of processing using loops. One of the most used features in C was the continue statement. Which basically means stop processing this iteration of the loop and go to the next record. Which is very useful.

So when I became an Oracle PL/SQL programmer back with release 7 of the database I was a bit upset that there was no comparable continue statement.

Well eventually Oracle caught up and in release 11g we can now use continue and it even goes one step further than what C could do.

Below is a basic example of looping logic you might use without continue. I guess what you might do in a pre 11g database.
Set a variable if a condition is met and use that so that you don't execute the rest of the logic in a loop statement.

DECLARE
  v_skip_rest_of_loop BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
  FOR i IN 1 .. 10 LOOP
  v_skip_rest_of_loop := FALSE;
  IF mod(i, 3) = 0 THEN
  v_skip_rest_of_loop := TRUE;
    END IF;
  IF NOT v_skip_rest_of_loop THEN
  -- lots of other processing here we don't 
      -- want to do for this loop when mod 3 = 0
  dbms_output.put_line('On line:'||to_char(i));
  END IF;
  END LOOP;
END;

But with CONTINUE available you can simplify the logic as below. No need to set a variable, just say start the next record

BEGIN
  FOR i IN 1 .. 10 LOOP
IF MOD(i, 3) = 0 THEN
CONTINUE; -- start the next iteration of the loop
END IF;

  -- lots of other processing here we don't 

    -- want to do for this loop when mod 3 = 0

dbms_output.put_line('On line:'||to_char(i));
END LOOP;
END;

But Oracle has made it even more concise in 11g. You can specify the condition logic as part of the continue definition using CONTINUE WHEN so it includes the logic from the IF statement above.

BEGIN
FOR i IN 1 .. 10 LOOP
CONTINUE WHEN MOD(i, 3) = 0;

  -- lots of other processing here we don't 

    -- want to do for this loop when mod 3 = 0

dbms_output.put_line('On line:'||to_char(i));
END LOOP;
END;