# saxon:break

A `saxon:break` instruction causes early exit from a loop defined using saxon:iterate. The instruction must appear lexically within the `saxon:iterate` element.

If the `saxon:iterate` instruction takes its input from streamed document (using the `saxon:stream()` function) then executing `saxon:break` will cause the parsing and analysis of that document to terminate. This can be very useful when you only want to examine a small amount of data near the start of a large document. Note however that it means that any well-formedness or validity errors appearing later in the source document will not be detected.

For further details and examples see saxon:iterate.

This instruction is available in Saxon-EE only

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