How to Fix the SyntaxError: 'break' Outside Loop Error in Python

1. Loops and Conditional Statements in Python
2. Fix the SyntaxError: 'break' outside loop Error in Python

This tutorial will discuss Python’s SyntaxError: 'break' outside loop error.

Loops and Conditional Statements in Python

Loops and conditional statements are a very integral part of any programming language.

Python provides two loops for and while that can execute a set of statements till a condition is met. The if-else statements are very common for executing some statements based on a condition.

The break statement is handy when working with loops; it can be used to break out of a loop. This means the control flow is shifted out of the loop whenever the break statement is encountered and the following statement is executed.

For example,

for i in range(2):
    print(i)
    break

Output:

0

Fix the SyntaxError: 'break' outside loop Error in Python

This error is caused due to a violation of the defined syntax of Python. As the error suggests, it occurs because the break statement is not within the loop but is rather outside the loop.

For example,

a = 7
if a > 5:
    break

Output:

SyntaxError: 'break' outside loop

The break statement can only exist in a loop. In the above example, we put it in the if statement, so the error was raised.

The fix for this error is simple, use the break statement only with a loop.

We can put the if statement within a loop to avoid this error.

See the code below.

a = 7
while True:
    if a > 5:
        break
print("Break Success")

Output:

Break Success

The above example created a loop where the condition is always true. We used an if statement to check the condition.

Since the condition is true, the break statement is executed, and we break out of the loop.