What is the primary use of the 'continue' statement in loops?

The 'continue' statement is specifically designed to skip the remaining code within the current iteration of a loop and immediately proceed to the next iteration. When the 'continue' statement is encountered, the loop does not terminate; instead, it bypasses the code following the 'continue' statement and jumps back to the loop's conditional expression, checking whether to continue with the next cycle or terminate the loop.

For example, in a 'for' or 'while' loop, if a certain condition is met and the 'continue' statement is executed, any subsequent lines of code for that particular iteration are ignored. This feature is especially useful when dealing with conditions in loops where you want to ignore specific iterations based on defined criteria while still allowing the loop to continue running for the remaining iterations.

This behavior contrasts with other options, such as exiting the loop entirely or returning values, which are managed through different mechanisms like 'break' statements for exiting and 'return' statements for returning values. The 'continue' statement does not pause execution, but rather facilitates efficient iteration control within loops.