In the PHP programming language, the `break` and `continue` statements are used to control the execution of loops. The main difference between them lies in their functionality:
`break`:
for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
if ($i == 5) {
break; // Terminate the loop if $i equals 5
}
echo $i . '<br>';
}
`continue`:
for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
if ($i % 2 == 0) {
continue; // Skip even values of $i
}
echo $i . '<br>';
}
In the provided examples, `break` is used to exit the loop when a certain condition is met, while `continue` is used to skip specific iterations of the loop.