What is the effect of 'break' inside a loop?

• A. It ends the loop and continues after the loop
• B. It skips to the next iteration
• C. It terminates the program
• D. It resets the loop counter

Answer: (A)

When a break is encountered inside a loop, it stops the loop immediately and transfers control to the first statement after the loop. The remaining iterations are skipped, even if the loop’s condition would normally allow them to run. This is handy for stopping early once a certain condition is met, rather than waiting for the loop to finish all its iterations. It’s different from continuing to the next iteration (which skips the rest of the current loop body but starts the next one) and from terminating the entire program (which would require a different command like exit). In nested loops, break only exits the innermost loop unless your language supports labeled breaks to target a outer loop.