The last
command is like the break
statement in C (as used in loops); it immediately exits the loop in question. If the LABEL is omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The continue
block, if any, is not executed:
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
#...
}
last
cannot be used to exit a block which returns a value such as eval {}
, sub {}
or do {}
, and should not be used to exit a grep() or map() operation.
See also "continue" for an illustration of how last
, next
, and redo
work.