Flow of Control using Loop/Iteration
Introduction
In this section we will look at the while loop and the for loop available in Python. These loops are used to control the repeated execution of selected statements.
While loop
The while loop exists in almost all programming languages and is used to iterative or repeat one or more code statements as long as the test condition(expression) is True. The iteration construct is usually used when the number of times we need to repeat the block of code to execute is not known. For example, it may need to repeat until some solution is found orthe user enters a particular value.
START
||
|| if condition is False
-------> condition --------------------------> STOP
| ||
| || if condition is True
| PROCESS
| ||
------------- The Python while loop has the basic form:
while <test-condition-is-True>
statement or statements
As shown both in the diagram and can be inderred from the code; while the test condition/expression is True then the statement or block of statements in the while loop will be executed. Note that the test is performed before each iteration, including the first iteration; therefore, if the condition fails the first time around the loop the statement or block of statements may never executed at all.
As with the If statement, indentation is key here as the statements included in the while statement are determined by indentation. Each statement that is indented to the same level after the while condition is part of the while loop.
However, as soon as a statement is no longer following the while block; then it is no longer part of the while loop and its execution is no longer under of control of the test-condition.
The following illustrates an example while loop in Python:
cond = 0
print("Starting")
while count < 10:
print(count, ' ', end = '') #part of the while loop
count += 1 #also, part of the while loop
print() #not part of the while loop
print("Done")
In this example while some variable count is less than the value 10 the while loop will continue to iterate(will be repeated). The while loop itself contains two statements; one prints out the value of count variable while the other increments count (remember count +=1 is equivalent to count = count + 1).
We have used the version print() that does not print carriage return when it prints out a value (this is indicated by the end = ‘’ option passed to the print() function).
The result of running this example is:
Starting
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Bye
As you can see the statements printing the starting and done messages are only run once. However, the statement printing out the count variable is run 10 times (printing out the values 0 - 9).
Once the value of count is equal to 10 then the loop finishes (or terminates).
Note that we needed to initialise the count variable before the loop. This is because it needs to have a value for the first iteration of the while loop. That is before the while loop does anything the program needs to already know the first value of count so that it can perform that very first test. This is a feature of the while loops behavior.
For Loop
In many cases we know how many times we want to iterative over one or more statements (as indeed we did in the previous section). Although the while loop can be used for such situations, the for loop is a far more concise way to do this. It typically also clearer to another programmer that the loop must iterate for a specific number of iterations.
The for loop is used to step a variable through a series of values until a given test is met. The behavoir of the for loop is illustrated in below:
Start
|
| for each item in sequance
|
|
|----------------->LAST item reached?--------->STOP
| |
| | NO
| |
| \ /
--------------------<-PROCESS
This flow chart shows that some sequence of values (for example all integer values between 0 and 9) will be used to iterate over a block of codeto process. When the last item in the sequence has been reached, the loop will terminate.
Many languages have a loop for of the form:
for i = from 0 to 10
statement or statements
In this case a variable i would take the values 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 up to 10.
In Python the approach is slightly different as the values from 0 up to 10 are represented by a range. This is actually a function that will generate the range of valuesto be used as the sequence in the loopfor. THis is because the Python for loop is very flexible and can loop over not only a range of integer values but also a set of values held in data structures such a list of integers or strings. We will return to this features of the for loop when we look at collections/containers of data in later chapter.
The format of the Python for loop when using a range of values is:
for <variable-name> in range(...):
statement
statement
An example is shown below which equates to the while loop we looked at earlier:
# loop over a set of values in a range:
print("Print out the values in a range:")
for i in range(0, 10):
print(i, ' ', end = '')
print()
print("Done!")
when we run this code, the output is:
Print out values in a range
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Done
As can be seen from the above; the end result is that we have generated a for loop that produces the same set of values as the earlier while loop. However,
- the code is more concide
- it is clear we are processing a range of values from 0 to 9 (note that it is up to but not including the final value) and
- we did not need to define this loop first variable.
For these reasons for loops are more common in programms in general than while loops.
One thing you might notice though is that in the while loop we are not constrained to incrementing the count variable by one (we just happened to do this). For example, we could have decided to increment count by 2 each time round the loop (a very common idea). In fact the range allow us to do exactly this; a third argument that can be provided to the range functionin the value to increment the loop variable by each time round the loop, for example:
# Now use values in a range but increment by 2
print('Print out values in a range with an increment of 2')
for i in range(0, 10, 2):
print(i, ' ', end='')
print()
print('Done')
# When we run this code, the output is:
Print out values in a range with an increment of 2
0 2 4 6 8
Done
Thus the value of the loop variable has jumped by 2 starting at 0. Once its value was 10 or more then the loop terminates. Of course, it is not only the value 2 we could use; we could increment by any meaningful integer. 3, 4 or 5, etc.
One interesting variation on the for loop is the use of a wild card (a’_’) instead of a looping variable; this can be useful if you are only interested in looping a certain number of times and not in the value of the loop counter itself, for example:
# now use an anonymous loop variable.
for _ in range(0,10):
print('.', end='')
In this case we are not interested in the values generated by the range per only in looping 10 times thus there is no benefit in recording the loop variable. The loop variable is represented by the underbar character ‘_’. Note that in actual fact this is a valid variable and can be referenced within the loop; however by convention it is treated as being anonymous.
Break Loop Statement
Python allows programmers to decide whether they want to break out of a loop early or not (whether we are using a for loop or a while loop). This is done using the break statement.
The break statement allows a developer to alter the normal cycle of a loop based on some criteria which may not be predictable in advance (for example it may be based on some user input).
The break statement, when executed, will terminate the current loop and jump the programm to the first line after the loop. The following diagram shows how this works for a for loop.
start
|
| for each item in sequence
|
last item reached?--------------------STOP
|
| no
|
start to process statements
|
|
|
| yes
break?------------------------- STOP
|
| no
|
process remainder the loop--->GOTO last item reached
Typically, a guard If statement is placed on the break so that the break statement is conditionally applied when appropriate.
This is shown below for a simple application where the user is asked to enter a number which may or may not be in the range defined by the for loop. IF the number is in the range, then we will loop until this value is reached and then break the loop (that is terminate early without processing the rest of the values in the loop):
print('Only print code if all iterations completed')
num = int(input('Enter a number to check for: '))
for i in range(0, 6):
if i == num:
break
print(i, ' ', end='')
print('Done')
If we run this and enter the value 7 (which is outside of the range) then all the values in the loop should be printed out:
Enter a number to check for: 7
0 1 2 3 4 5 Done
However, if we enter the value 3 then only the values 0, 1, and 2 will be printed out before the loop breaks terminates early.
Enter a number to check for: 3
0 1 2 Done
Note that the string “Done” is printed out in both cases as it is the first line after the for loop that is not indended and is thus not part of the loop for.
Note that the break statement can come anywhere within the block of code associated with the loop contruct. (whether that is a for loop or a while loop). This means that there can be statements before it and after it.
Continue Loop Statement
The continue statement also affects the flow of control within the looping constructs for and while. However, it does not terminate the while loop, rather it only terminates the current iteration round the loop. This allows you to skip over part of a loop’s iteration for a particular value, but then to continue with the remaining values in the sequence.
Start
|
| for each item in sequence
|
last item has reached? YES ---- > STOP
|
| NO
|
Start to process statements
|
|
Continue? ---- NO ---> Process remainder of loop
||
|| YES ----> Go to Last Item has reached?
A guard if statement can be used to determine when to continue statement should be executed.
As with the break statement, the continue statement can come anywhere within the body of the looping construct. This means that you can have some statements that will be executed every value in the sequence and some that are only executed when the continue statement is not run.
This is shown below. In this program the continue statement is executed only for old numbers and thus the two print() statements are only if the value of i is even:
for i in range(0, 10):
print(i, ' ', end = '')
if i % 2 == 1:
continue;
print('Hey it s an even number')
print('We love even numbers!')
print('Done')
When we run this code we get:
0
we
1
we
3
we
5
we
7
we
9
hey its an even number
love even numbers
2 hey its an even number
love even numbers
4 hey its an even number
love even numbers
6 hey its an even number
love even numbers
8 hey its an even number
love even numbers
Done
As we can see, we only print out the messages about a number being even when the values are 0,2,4,6 and 8
For Loop with Else
A for loop can have an optional else block at the end of the loop. The else part is executed if and only if all items in the sequence are processed. The for loop may fail to process all elements in the loop if for some reason an error occurs in your program (for example if your have a syntax error) or if you break the loop.
Here is an example of a for loop with an else part:
# only print code if all iterations completed over a list
print('only print code if all iterations completed over a list')
num = int(input("Enter a number to check for: "))
for i in range(0, 6):
if i == num:
break
print(i, ' ', end = '')
else:
print()
print("All Iterations Succcessful!")
If we run this code and enter the integer value 7 as the number to check for; then the else block executes as the if test within the for statement is never True and thus the loop is never broken, and all values are processed.
Only print code if all iterations completed
Enter a number to check for: 7
0 1 2 3 4 5
All iterations successful
However, if we enter the value 3 as the number to check for; then the if statement will be True when the loop variable ‘i’ has the value 3; thus only be 0,1 and 2 will be processed by the loop. In this situation the else part will not be executed because not all the values in the sequence were processed:
Only print code if all iterations completed
Enter a number to check for: 3
0 1 2
Dice Roll Game
The following short program illustrates how a while loop can be used to control the execution of the main body of code. In this game we will continue to roll a pair of dice until the user indicates that they do not want to roll again (we use the random module for this which is discussed in the next chapter). When this occurs the while loop will terminate:
import random
def main():
MIN = 1
MAX = 10
roll_again = 'y'
while roll_again == 'y':
print("Rolling the dices...")
print("The values are ...")
dice1 = random.randint(MIN,MAX)
print(dice1)
dice2 = random.randint(MIN,MAX)
print(dice2)
roll_again = input("Roll the dices again? y/n")
print("bye")
main()
When we run this program the results of rolling two dice are shown. The program will keep looping and printing out the two dice value until the user indicates that they no longer want to roll the dice:
Rolling the dices...
The values are....
2
6
Roll the dices again? (y / n): y
Rolling the dices...
The values are....
4
1
Roll the dices again? (y / n): y
Rolling the dices...
The values are....
3
6
Roll the dices again? (y / n): n
Online Resources
See the Python Standard Library documentation for:
- https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.htm the online Python flow of control tutorial.
7.10 Exercices
There are two exercices for this chapter. The first exercise will require a simple for loop while second is more complicated requiring nested for and a break statement.
7.10.1 Calculate the Factorial of a Number
Write a program that can find the factorial of any given number. For example, find the factorial of the number 5 (often written as a 5!) which is 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 and equals 120.
The factorial is not defined for negative numbers and the factorial of ZERO is 1; that is 0!=1
Your program should take as input an integer from the user (you can reuse your logic from the last chapter to verify that they have entered a positive integer value using isnumeric())
You should:
- If the number is less than Zero return with an error message.
- Check to see if the number is Zero - if it is then the answer is 1 - print this out.
- Otherwise use a loop to generate the result and print it out.