Unnecessary 'continue' statement

Reports continue statements if they are the last reachable statements in the loop. These continue statements are unnecessary and can be safely removed.

Example:

  for (String element: elements) {
    System.out.println();
    continue;
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  for (String element: elements) {
    System.out.println();
  }

The inspection doesn't analyze JSP files.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

UnnecessaryContinue

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Verbose or redundant code constructs

Use the Ignore in then branch of 'if' statement with 'else' branch option to ignore continue statements when they are placed in a then branch of a complete if-else statement.

Example:

  for (String element: elements) {
    if(element.isEmpty()) {
      continue;
    } else {
      //...
    }
  }

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Unnecessary 'continue' statement inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Ignore in then branch of 'if' statement with 'else' branch: Default value:
Not selected

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection UnnecessaryContinue

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025