Programming Perl, 4th Edition

next

next LABEL
next

The next operator is like the continue statement in C: it starts the next iteration of the loop designated by LABEL:

LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
    next LINE if /^#/;     # discard comments
    ...
}

If there were a continue block in this example, it would be executed immediately following the invocation of next. When LABEL is omitted, the operator refers to the innermost enclosing loop.

A block by itself is semantically identical to a loop that executes once. Thus, next will exit such a block early (via the continue block, if there is one).

next cannot be used to exit a block that returns a value, such as eval {}, sub {}, or do {}, and it should not be used to exit a grep or map operation. With warnings enabled, Perl warns you if you next out of a loop not in your current lexical scope, such as a loop in a calling subroutine. See the section Loop Statements in Chapter 4.