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Chapter Summary

C++ provides a limited number of statements. Most of these affect the flow of control within a program:

  • while, for, and do while statements, which provide iterative execution.
  • if and switch, which provide conditional execution.
  • continue, which stops the current iteration of a loop.
  • break, which exits a loop or switch statement.
  • goto, which transfers control to a labeled statement.
  • try and catch, which define a try block enclosing a sequence of statements that might throw an exception. The catch clause(s) are intended to handle the exception(s) that the enclosed code might throw.
  • throw expression statements, which exit a block of code, transferring control to an associated catch clause.
  • return, which stops execution of a function. (We’ll cover return statements in Chapter 6.)

In addition, there are expression statements and declaration statements. An expression statement causes the subject expression to be evaluated. Declarations and definitions of variables were described in Chapter 2.