Break Statement in PHP

In PHP, the break statement is used to terminate the execution of the innermost loop (such as for, foreach, while, or do-while loops) or switch statement in which it appears. It's commonly used to exit a loop prematurely when a certain condition is met or to exit a switch statement after a particular case has been executed.

Here's how the break statement works within different contexts:

for ($i = 0; $i < 5; $i++) {
    echo $i . "<br>";
    if ($i == 2) {
        break; // Exit the loop when $i is equal to 2
    }
}

In this example, the loop will iterate from 0 to 2, and then the break statement will terminate the loop prematurely once $i becomes equal to 2.

$day = "Monday";
switch ($day) {
    case "Monday":
        echo "Today is Monday.";
        break;
    case "Tuesday":
        echo "Today is Tuesday.";
        break;
    default:
        echo "Today is not a weekday.";
}

In this example, the break statement is used to terminate each case block. Without break, PHP would continue executing subsequent case blocks after the first matching case, leading to unintended behavior. The break statement ensures that once a matching case is found and executed, the switch statement exits.

The break statement can also be used with a numeric argument to exit multiple levels of nested loops. For example:

for ($i = 0; $i < 5; $i++) {
    for ($j = 0; $j < 5; $j++) {
        if ($i * $j > 6) {
            break 2; // Exit both loops when $i * $j is greater than 6
        }
        echo $i * $j . "<br>";
    }
}

In this example, the break 2 statement exits both the inner and outer loops when the condition $i * $j > 6 is met. The numeric argument specifies the number of levels of nested loops to break out of.