continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration and continue execution at the condition evaluation and then the beginning of the next iteration.
$i = 0; while ($i++ < 5) { echo "Outer<br />\n"; while (1) { echo " Middle<br />\n"; while (1) { echo " Inner<br />\n"; continue 3; } echo "This never gets output.<br />\n"; } echo "Neither does this.<br />\n"; }