RS.CLIPPY.NEEDLESS_CONTINUE

`continue` statements that can be replaced by a rearrangement of code

This checker is a Clippy lint created by The Rust Project Contributors. The documentation shown here is a copy of the original documentation for: needless_continue. Copyright ©2025 The Rust Team. All rights reserved.

What it does

The lint checks for if-statements appearing in loops that contain a continue statement in either their main blocks or their else-blocks, when omitting the else-block possibly with some rearrangement of code can make the code easier to understand. The lint also checks if the last statement in the loop is a continue

Why is this bad?

Having explicit else blocks for if statements containing continue in their THEN branch adds unnecessary branching and nesting to the code. Having an else block containing just continue can also be better written by grouping the statements following the whole if statement within the THEN block and omitting the else block completely.

Example

while condition() {
    update_condition();
    if x {
        // ...
    } else {
        continue;
    }
    println!("Hello, world");
}

Could be rewritten as

while condition() {
    update_condition();
    if x {
        // ...
        println!("Hello, world");
    }
}

As another example, the following code

loop {
    if waiting() {
        continue;
    } else {
        // Do something useful
    }
    # break;
}

Could be rewritten as

loop {
    if waiting() {
        continue;
    }
    // Do something useful
    # break;
}


fn foo() -> ErrorKind { ErrorKind::NotFound }
for _ in 0..10 {
    match foo() {
        ErrorKind::NotFound => {
            eprintln!("not found");
            continue
        }
        ErrorKind::TimedOut => {
            eprintln!("timeout");
            continue
        }
        _ => {
            eprintln!("other error");
            continue
        }
    }
}

Could be rewritten as


fn foo() -> ErrorKind { ErrorKind::NotFound }
for _ in 0..10 {
    match foo() {
        ErrorKind::NotFound => {
            eprintln!("not found");
        }
        ErrorKind::TimedOut => {
            eprintln!("timeout");
        }
        _ => {
            eprintln!("other error");
        }
    }
}