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       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of
       this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux  manual  page  for  details  of
       Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       break — exit from for, while, or until loop

SYNOPSIS

       break [n]

DESCRIPTION

       The  break  utility  shall  exit from the smallest enclosing for, while, or until loop, if
       any; or from the nth enclosing loop if n is specified. The  value  of  n  is  an  unsigned
       decimal  integer greater than or equal to 1. The default shall be equivalent to n=1.  If n
       is greater than the number of enclosing loops,  the  outermost  enclosing  loop  shall  be
       exited. Execution shall continue with the command immediately following the loop.

OPTIONS

       None.

OPERANDS

       See the DESCRIPTION.

STDIN

       Not used.

INPUT FILES

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       None.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       Not used.

STDERR

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

        0    Successful completion.

       >0    The n value was not an unsigned decimal integer greater than or equal to 1.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       None.

EXAMPLES

       for i in *
       do
           if test −d "$i"
           then break
           fi
       done

RATIONALE

       In  early proposals, consideration was given to expanding the syntax of break and continue
       to refer to a label associated with the appropriate loop as a  preferable  alternative  to
       the  n method. However, this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 does reserve the name space of command
       names ending with a <colon>.  It is anticipated that a future  implementation  could  take
       advantage of this and provide something like:

           outofloop: for i in a b c d e
           do
               for j in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
               do
                   if test −r "${i}${j}"
                   then break outofloop
                   fi
               done
           done

       and that this might be standardized after implementation experience is achieved.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities

COPYRIGHT

       Portions  of  this  text  are  reprinted  and  reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std
       1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology  --  Portable  Operating  System
       Interface  (POSIX),  The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc  and  The  Open  Group.   (This  is
       POSIX.1-2008  with  the  2013  Technical  Corrigendum  1  applied.)  In  the  event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open  Group  Standard,  the
       original  IEEE  and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard
       can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most  likely  to  have
       been  introduced  during  the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report
       such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .