As discussed in the future of Lua thread, one way of adding a "continue" statement to the language was to allow it in all cases, except when it causes initialisation of a variable used in an until clause to be skipped. The included patch is provided so that discussions on this approach can be enhanced by experience of experimenting with the approach. Patch against 5.1.4: http://www.corsix.org/luacontinue/continue.patch Test cases which should all work: http://www.corsix.org/luacontinue/continue_valid.lua Test cases which should not work: http://www.corsix.org/luacontinue/continue_invalid.lua