How do I break multiple foreach loops? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Your example is rather generic so it's hard to say what's going on but I'm getting such a a strong code smell from the code you provided that I'm forced to think there has to be another way to do the thing entirely, most likely through refactoring the actual data structure to something more meaningful.

What kind of list objects is? What other (most likely important) data it contains? If it's not too much of a hassle, I'd appreciate if you provided more relevant code since the refactorer in me is getting all giddy just from seeing that pile of loops.

Answer 2

You could use a labeled break statement. This kind of break terminates an outer statement

See The break Statement

Answer 3

One way to break, or collapse several statements (actually stack frames) is to throw an exception but this is not recommended because it really expensive for the run-time to unwind the stack and it could lead to really nasty difficult to debug undefined behavior, (keep this in mind).

Otherwise, what I recommend, rewrite that code to be able to break out of the loop in a graceful manner. If you cant change this code in any other way, well then you'll have to result to exceptions...

Answer 4

Apart from the fact that Java supports labelled break, see also Is it possible to exit a for before time in C++, if an ending condition is reached? which is a similar question with some other relevent solutions.

Answer 5

Extract all the loops into the function and use return.

Answer 6

Throw an exception and catch it outside the loops? Use something that's "considered harmful?"

It's a bit funny when computer science paints itself into a corner ;-)