EXIT Statement

The EXIT statement breaks out of a loop. The EXIT statement has two forms: the unconditional EXIT and the conditional EXIT WHEN. With either form, you can name the loop to be exited. For more information, see "Controlling Loop Iterations: LOOP and EXIT Statements".

Syntax

Description of the illustration exit_statement.gif

Keyword and Parameter Description

boolean_expression

An expression that returns the Boolean value TRUE, FALSE, or NULL. It is evaluated with each iteration of the loop. If the expression returns TRUE, the current loop (or the loop labeled by label_name) is exited immediately. For the syntax of boolean_expression, see "Expressions".

EXIT

An unconditional EXIT statement (that is, one without a WHEN clause) exits the current loop immediately. Execution resumes with the statement following the loop.

label_name

Identifies the loop exit from: either the current loop, or any enclosing labeled loop.

Usage Notes

The EXIT statement can be used only inside a loop. PL/SQL lets you code an infinite loop. For example, the following loop will never terminate normally:

WHILE TRUE LOOP ... END LOOP;

In such cases, you must use an EXIT statement to exit the loop.

If you use an EXIT statement to exit a cursor FOR loop prematurely, the cursor is closed automatically. The cursor is also closed automatically if an exception is raised inside the loop.

Examples

The EXIT statement in the following example is not allowed because you cannot exit from a block directly; you can exit only from a loop:

DECLARE
   amount  NUMBER;
   maximum NUMBER;
BEGIN
   ...
   BEGIN
      ...
      IF amount >= maximum THEN
         EXIT;  -- not allowed; use RETURN instead
      END IF;
   END;

The following loop normally executes ten times, but it will exit prematurely if there are less than ten rows to fetch:

FOR i IN 1..10 LOOP
   FETCH c1 INTO emp_rec;
   EXIT WHEN c1%NOTFOUND;
   total_comm := total_comm + emp_rec.comm;
END LOOP;

The following example illustrates the use of loop labels:

<<outer>>
FOR i IN 1..10 LOOP
   ...
   <<inner>>
   FOR j IN 1..100 LOOP
      ...
      EXIT outer WHEN ...  -- exits both loops
   END LOOP inner;
END LOOP outer;

Related Topics

Expressions, LOOP Statements