Perl | next operator

next operator in Perl skips the current loop execution and transfers the iterator to the value specified by the next. If there’s a label specified in the program, then execution skips to the next iteration identified by the Label.

Syntax : next Label

Example 1:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Perl Program to find the frequency
# of an element

@Array = ('G', 'E', 'E', 'K', 'S');
$c = 0;
foreach $key (@Array)
{
    if($key eq 'E')
    {
        $c = $c + 1;
    }
    next;
}

print "Frequency of E in the Array: $c";

Output:

Frequency of E in the Array: 2

Example 2:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$i = 0;

# label for outer loop
outer:
while ( $i < 3 ) {

    $j = 0;
    while ( $j < 3 ) {

        # Printing values of i and j
        print "i =  $i and j =  $j\n";

        # Skipping the loop if i==j
        if ( $j == $i ) {

            $i = $i + 1;
            print "As i == j, hence going back to outer loop\n\n";

            # Using next to skip the iteration
            next outer;
        }
        $j = $j + 1;
    }

    $i = $i + 1;

}# end of outer loop

Output:

i =  0 and j =  0
As i == j, hence going back to outer loop

i =  1 and j =  0
i =  1 and j =  1
As i == j, hence going back to outer loop

i =  2 and j =  0
i =  2 and j =  1
i =  2 and j =  2
As i == j, hence going back to outer loop