Difference between Return and Break statements

Question

How does a return statement differ from break statement    If I have to exit an if condition  which one should I prefer  return or break

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You use break break out of a loop or a switch statement    You use return in the function to return a value  Return statement ends the function and returns control to where the function was called

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You won t be able to exit only from an if condition using either return or break   return is used when you need to return from a method after its execution is finished when you don t want to execute the rest of the method code  So if you use return  then you will not only return from your if condition  but also from the whole method   Consider the following method   public void myMethod         int i   10       if i  10          return       System out println  This will never be printed        Here  using return causes to stop the execution of the whole method after line 3 and execution goes back to its caller    break is used to break out from a loop or a switch statement  Consider this example -   int i   for int j 0  j lt 10  j          for i 0  i lt 10  i                  if i  0              break            This break will cause the loop  innermost  to stop just after one iteration             if j  0          break        and then this break will cause the outermost loop to stop     switch i        case 0  break        This break will cause execution to skip executing the second case statement      case 1  System out println  This will also never be printed        This type of break statement is known as unlabeled break statement  There is another form of break  which is called labeled break  Consider this example -   int     arrayOfInts       32  87  3  589                                  12  1076  2000  8                                  622  127  77  955                                int searchfor   12   int i  int j   0  boolean foundIt   false   search      for  i   0  i  lt  arrayOfInts length  i                  for  j   0  j  lt  arrayOfInts i  length  j                          if  arrayOfInts i  j     searchfor                                foundIt   true                  break search                                  This example uses nested for loops to search for a value in a two-dimensional array  When the value is found  a labeled break terminates the outer for loop  labeled  search     You can learn more abour break and return statements from JavaDoc

User · Answer

break just breaks the loop  amp  return gets control back to the caller method

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break breaks the current loop and continues  while return it will break the current method and continues from where you called that method

User · Answer

No offence  but none of the other answers  so far  has it quite right   break is used to immediately terminate a for loop  a while loop or a switch statement  You can not break from an if block   return is used the terminate a method  and possibly return a value    A return within any loop or block will of course also immediately terminate that loop block

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Break statement will break the whole loop and execute the code after loop  and Return will not execute the code after that return statement and execute the loop with next increment   Break  for int i 0 i lt 5 i         print i      if i  2              break            output  0 1  return  for int i 0 i lt 5 i         print i     if i  2           return           output  0 1 3 4

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How does a return statement differ from break statement   Return statement exits current method execution and returns value to calling method  Break is used to exit from any loop   If I have to exit an if condition  which one should I prefer  return or break   To exit from method execution use return  to exit from any loop you can use either break or return based on your requirement

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Break will only stop the loop while return inside a loop will stop the loop and return from the function

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If you want to exit from a simple if else statement but still stays within a particular context  not by returning to the calling context   you can just set the block condition to false   if condition     do stuff    if something happens          condition   false      This will guarantee that there is no further execution  the way I think you want it  You can only use break in a loop or switch case

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In this code i is iterated till 3 then the loop ends   int function  void        for  int i 0  i lt 5  i                if  i    3                   break                    In this code i is iterated till 3 but with an output   int function  void        for  int i 0  i lt 5  i                if  i    3                   return i

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break is used when you want to exit from the loop  while return is used to go back to the step where it was called or to stop further execution

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break - These transfer statement bypass the correct flow of execution to outside  of the current loop by skipping on the remaining iteration   class test       public static void main String   args                for int i 0 i lt 10 i                          if i  5              break                    System out println i             output will be  0 1 2 3 4   Continue  -These transfer Statement will bypass the flow of execution to starting point of the loop inorder to continue with next iteration by skipping all the remaining instructions    class test       public static void main String   args                for int i 0 i lt 10 i                          if i  5              continue                    System out println i             output will be  0 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9    return  - At any time in a method the return statement can be used to cause execution to branch back to the caller of the method   Thus  the return statement immediately terminates the method in which it is executed  The following example illustrates this point  Here  return causes execution to return to the Java run-time system  since it is the run-time system that calls main      class test       public static void main String   args                for int i 0 i lt 10 i                          if i  5              return                    System out println i             output will be   0 1 2 3 4

User · Answer

break is used to exit  escape  the for-loop  while-loop  switch-statement that you are currently executing   return will exit the entire method you are currently executing  and possibly return a value to the caller  optional    So to answer your question  as others have noted in comments and answers  you cannot use either break nor return to escape an if-else-statement per se  They are used to escape other scopes      Consider the following example  The value of x inside the while-loop will determine if the code below the loop will be executed or not   void f        int x   -1     while true            if x    0          break             escape while   and jump to execute code after the the loop       else if x    1          return            will end the function f   immediately                            no further code inside this method will be executed        do stuff and eventually set variable x to either 0 or 1                   code that will be executed on break  but not with return

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Return will exit from the method  as others have already pointed out  If you need to skip just over some part of the method  you can use break  even without a loop   label  if  some condition           some stuff        if  some other condition  break label         more stuff         Note  that this is usually not good style  though useful sometimes

[java] Difference between Return and Break statements

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