I still get the occasional Classic ASP VBScript maintenance job from time to time, and it reminds me of the language statements it just doesn’t have. Like “continue”, great for skipping a bunch of logic inside a For loop. Turns out, there is a nice simple way to get that functionality.

A big hat tip to Stack Overflow, once again. This tip comes directly from a question ‘“Continue” (to next iteration) on VBScript‘ which I found on the first quick search.

If I have a loop with some logic that I only want to run when some conditions are satisfied, it can get pretty messy with nested If statements. Or I can short-circuit the logic by just skipping to the next iteration of the loop, if I have a Continue statement. This is what it would look like:

For Each account In accounts
    If condition1(account) Then Continue
    If condition2(account) Then Continue
    If condition3(account) Then Continue

    ' do something with account...

Next

Most modern languages support such a statement. VBScript not so much. Of course, the conditional tests could all be handled within a function, but that can sometimes make the whole logic less clear. The construct above is very clear and concise. If only VBScript had a Continue statement…

But as Tmdean helpfully points out in his answer on Stack Overflow, you can easily simulate a Continue statement with a null Do…Loop and Exit Do! Here’s what the above becomes:

For Each account In accounts
    Do ' null loop for logic short-circuit

        If condition1(account) Then Exit Do
        If condition2(account) Then Exit Do
        If condition3(account) Then Exit Do

        ' do something with account...

    Loop While False ' end of null loop
Next

I just love it when the job can still be done in old languages like VBScript!