You can break in Scala by encapsulating a code block within a 'breakable {...}' scope. The break throws an exception caught by breakable; the break literal thou

You can break in Scala by encapsulating a code block within a 'breakable {...}' scope. The break throws an exception caught by breakable; the break literal though is not a keyword. Odersky explains (section 7.6) that because Scala leans toward a functional rather than imperative paradigm, it was necessary to give up traditional break & continue in order to incorporate other functional language facilities. He poses: what would 'continue' mean within a function literal? Reading Odersky's book now... it's interesting stuff.