

4.4 – break and return

The break and return statements allow us to jump out from an inner block.

You use the break statement to finish a loop. This statement breaks the inner loop (for, repeat, or while) that contains it; it cannot be used outside a loop. After the break, the program continues running from the point immediately after the broken loop.

A return statement returns occasional results from a function or simply finishes a function. There is an implicit return at the end of any function, so you do not need to use one if your function ends naturally, without returning any value.

For syntactic reasons, a break or return can appear only as the last statement of a block (in other words, as the last statement in your chunk or just before an end, an else, or an until). For instance, in the next example, break is the last statement of the then block.

    local i = 1
    while a[i] do
      if a[i] == v then break end
      i = i + 1
Usually, these are the places where we use these statements, because any other statement following them is unreachable. Sometimes, however, it may be useful to write a return (or a break) in the middle of a block; for instance, if you are debugging a function and want to avoid its execution. In such cases, you can use an explicit do block around the statement:
    function foo ()
      return          --<< SYNTAX ERROR
      -- `return' is the last statement in the next block
      do return end   -- OK
      ...             -- statements not reached