How do you use the continue statement in loops?

The continue statement is used within loops to skip the current iteration and immediately proceed to the next iteration of the loop. When the continue statement is encountered, it causes the loop to disregard any remaining code in the current iteration, allowing the control to jump directly to the loop’s condition check for the next iteration.

For example, if you have a loop processing elements in a list, and you want to skip any elements that don’t meet certain criteria (like being even numbers), you can use continue to bypass code that would otherwise execute for those elements. This ensures that only the desired iterations of the loop are executed.

The other choices describe different behaviors that do not accurately represent the function of the continue statement. Stopping the loop entirely, pausing it momentarily, or exiting completely refers to behaviors associated with the break statement or other control flow mechanisms not related to continue.