# prefer-continue

📝 Prefer early continues over whole-loop conditional wrapping.

💼🚫 This rule is enabled in the ✅ `recommended` [config](https://github.com/sindresorhus/eslint-plugin-unicorn#recommended-config). This rule is _disabled_ in the ☑️ `unopinionated` [config](https://github.com/sindresorhus/eslint-plugin-unicorn#recommended-config).

🔧 This rule is automatically fixable by the [`--fix` CLI option](https://eslint.org/docs/latest/user-guide/command-line-interface#--fix).

<!-- end auto-generated rule header -->
<!-- Do not manually modify this header. Run: `npm run fix:eslint-docs` -->

Avoid wrapping an entire loop body in a conditional. A `continue` guard often makes the main path clearer by skipping uninteresting iterations first.

This rule only reports when a block-bodied loop contains exactly one statement and that statement is an `if` statement without `else`. With the default `maximumStatements` option, it does not report nested `if` statements, loops that continue after the `if`, or non-block loop bodies.

It also does not report when the `if` body unconditionally exits the iteration (its last statement is `return`, `break`, `continue`, or `throw`), since an early `continue` would not flatten anything.

## Examples

```js
// ❌
for (const item of items) {
	if (item.isActive) {
		process(item);
		save(item);
	}
}

// ✅
for (const item of items) {
	if (!item.isActive) {
		continue;
	}

	process(item);
	save(item);
}
```

```js
// ✅
for (const item of items) {
	if (item.isActive) {
		process(item);
	}
}
```

```js
// ✅
for (const item of items) {
	if (item.isActive) {
		process(item);
		save(item);
	}

	finish(item);
}
```

```js
// ✅
function findActive(items) {
	for (const item of items) {
		if (item.isActive) {
			process(item);
			return item;
		}
	}
}
```

## Options

### maximumStatements

Type: `integer`\
Default: `1`

Maximum number of statements allowed in a whole-loop conditional wrapper.

With the default, a single-statement wrapper is allowed:

```js
for (const item of items) {
	if (item.isActive) {
		process(item);
	}
}
```

Set `maximumStatements` to `0` to report any non-empty whole-loop conditional wrapper:

```js
'unicorn/prefer-continue': [
	'error',
	{
		maximumStatements: 0,
	},
]
```

Autofix is conservative. It skips wrappers with comments outside the condition or moved body, trailing wrapper comments, moved lexical names that are used in the condition, direct `eval(...)` with moved lexical declarations, direct function, class, TypeScript, `using`, or `await using` declarations, and multiline-sensitive strings, templates, or JSX. Multiline unbraced consequents are report-only.

## Related Rules

[`unicorn/prefer-early-return`](./prefer-early-return.md) applies the same guard-clause idea to functions.

[`unicorn/no-useless-continue`](./no-useless-continue.md) removes `continue` statements that do not change control flow. This rule creates a `continue` guard that skips the rest of the loop body, so the two rules are complementary.

ESLint's [`no-continue`](https://eslint.org/docs/latest/rules/no-continue) enforces the opposite style. Do not enable both rules together.