Branching statements

In addition to the decision making and looping statements, we have branching statements. These interrupt the normal top-to-bottom execution of our code. There are three: break, continue, and return.

Neither Pass Go, Nor Collect $200

A break statement exits a loop (jumps to the code after its code block) immediately. What it says is "Stop doing that! Now!"

Here is an example of (bad) code that I saw in production. How could we write this using an equivalent if statement?

bool shouldPrint = true;
while(shouldPrint) {
  Console.WriteLine("I should print!");
  break;
}

We cried, then laughed a bit, and dubbed it the "while/break" statement. (No, that shouldn't be a thing.)

Ummm… break it down?

break statements are not that common. In fact, they're often a symptom of poorly designed code. An example of where you might use them is if you have a progam interacting with the user, and would like to abruptly exit, perhaps because of an error conditiion.

Try running and experimenting with this code:

while(true) {
  Console.WriteLine("What is your favorite color?");
  string favoriteColor = Console.ReadLine();

  if(favoriteColor == "Blue. No yel-- Auuuuuuuugh!")
  {
    Console.WriteLine("You're just making Monty Python references.");
    Console.WriteLine("Get out!");
    break;
  }

  Console.WriteLine($"Your favorite color is {favoriteColor}");
}

Continuing with... continue

The second branching statement is continue. The continue statement is more common than the break statement.

Continue skips the current iteration, jumping to the end of the loop.

Let's say we wanted to count from one to ten, skipping multiples of three:

for(int count = 1; count <= 10; count++)
{
  if(count % 3 == 0) { // it's a multiple of three
    continue;
  }
  Console.WriteLine("Count is " + count);
}

We could have done this with an if/else statement, but using continue skips our println just fine. Which one should you use? This depends on the situation. A continue may make the code clearer.

How could we have changed our condition to make this code simpler and avoided using continue?

Baby, Come Back!

The third branching statement, return, isn't specific to loops. When we write our own methods, we'll use this to exit a method and return execution to the point where another method called it.

Try this:

public class EvenOrOdd
{
  public static void main(string[] args)
  {
    Console.WriteLine("Message for 42: " + chooseMessage(42));
    Console.WriteLine("Message for 23: " + chooseMessage(23));
  }

  public static string chooseMessage(int input)
  {
    if(input % 2 == 0)
    {
      return "Even Steven!";
    }
    return "You're odd!";
  }
}

Notice how using a return allows us to avoid using else—the method immediately returns (responds) and exits. More on this when we get to methods.

Nested Loops

It is not uncommon to place one loop inside another. Imagine the second, minute, and hour hands of a clock. Once the second hand completes its circuit of the clock face, the minute hand advances. When the minute hand completes its circuit, the hour hand advances.

Let's do the hour and minute hand in code. We'll increment the minute hand by five minutes each time so that we don't fill up our console so quickly. Also, we'll only do three hours, starting with 1:00 and ending with 2:55:

for (int hours = 1; hours < 3; hours++)
{
  for (int minutes = 0; minutes < 60; minutes += 5)
  {
    Console.WriteLine($"The time is {hours}:{minutes}");
  }
}

Now that is wizardy!

Making It Pretty

Notice how "1:00" comes out "1:0" in the previous example? This is because we're simply appending the value of minutes (0 in this case) to the hours value. We can use string formatting here to make our output prettier by giving it a format pattern. This is similar to how number formats in spreadsheets work:

for (int hours = 1; hours < 3; hours++)
{
  for (int minutes = 0; minutes < 60; minutes += 5)
  {
    Console.WriteLine($"The time is {hours:00}:{minutes:00}");
  }
}

In the code hours:00, the variable hours is being converted to a string using the format 00 - which means it should always take up two digits. There are tons of ways you can format strings. You don't need to memorize them all, but you should be comfortable with the concept and comfortable looking them up online.