break, continue, and the loop else

Two keywords give you finer control inside loops.

break stops the loop immediately, even if more items remain. It is perfect for searching: once you find what you want, you leave.

for n in [4, 9, 7, 2]:
    if n > 5:
        print("found", n)
        break   # stop at the first match (9)

continue skips the rest of the current pass and jumps to the next item. Use it to ignore values you do not care about:

for n in range(1, 6):
    if n % 2 == 0:
        continue   # skip even numbers
    print(n)       # prints 1, 3, 5

Loops also have an optional else block. It runs only if the loop finished without hitting break. This is the clean way to express "I searched everything and found nothing":

target = 8
for n in [4, 9, 7, 2]:
    if n == target:
        print("found it")
        break
else:
    print("not found")   # runs because no break happened

Read the loop else as "if we never broke out." It pairs naturally with searches and works the same on while loops.