Final answer:
The 'continue' statement is used to skip the current iteration of a while loop and immediately start the next iteration, whereas the 'break' statement causes an exit from the while loop entirely.
Step-by-step explanation:
The continue statement and the break statement are used to control the flow of execution within a while loop. When a continue statement is encountered inside a while loop, the current iteration of the loop is terminated, and control is immediately passed to the beginning of the loop for the next iteration. In contrast, when a break statement is used, it exits the while loop entirely, and control is transferred to the statement immediately following the loop.
For example, if you have a while loop that iterates over numbers 1 to 10, and you have a continue statement that gets executed when the number is 5, the loop will skip the rest of the code for that iteration and continue with number 6 on the next iteration. However, if a break statement gets executed when the number is 5, the loop will terminate, and the program will not continue to number 6; it will instead move to whatever code comes after the loop.