In programming, a loop means repeating something multiple times. There are different kinds of loops:

• While loops repeat something while a condition is true.
• Until loops repeat something while a condition is false.
• For loops repeat something for each element of a list.

We'll talk about all of these in this tutorial.

Now we know how if statements work.

its_raining = True
if its_raining:
    print("Oh crap, it's raining!")

While loops are really similar to if statements.

its_raining = True
while its_raining:
    print("Oh crap, it's raining!")
    # we'll jump back to the line with the word "while" from here
print("It's not raining anymore.")

If you're not familiar with while loops, the program's output may be a bit surprising:

Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
Oh crap, it's raining!
(much more raining)

Again, this program does not break your computer. It just prints the same thing multiple times. We can interrupt it by pressing Ctrl+C.

In this example, its_raining was the condition. If something in the while loop would have set its_raining to False, the loop would have ended and the program would have printed It's not raining anymore.

Let's actually create a program that does just that:

its_raining = True
while its_raining:
    print("It's raining!")
    answer = input("Or is it? (y=yes, n=no) ")
    if answer == 'y':
        print("Oh well...")
    elif answer == 'n':
        its_raining = False     # end the while loop
    else:
        print("Enter y or n next time.")
print("It's not raining anymore.")

Running the program may look like this:

It's raining!
Or is it? (y=yes, n=no) i dunno
Enter y or n next time.
It's raining!
Or is it? (y=yes, n=no) y
Oh well...
It's raining!
Or is it? (y=yes, n=no) n
It's not raining anymore.

The while loop doesn't check the condition all the time, it only checks it in the beginning.

>>> its_raining = True
>>> while its_raining:
...     its_raining = False
...     print("It's not raining, but the while loop doesn't know it yet.")
...
It's not raining, but the while loop doesn't know it yet.
>>>

We can also interrupt a loop even if the condition is still true using the break keyword. In this case, we'll set condition to True and rely on nothing but break to end the loop.

while True:
    answer = input("Is it raining? (y=yes, n=no) ")
    if answer == 'y':
        print("It's raining!")
    elif answer == 'n':
        print("It's not raining anymore.")
        break   # end the loop
    else:
        print("Enter y or n.")

The program works like this:

Is it raining? (y=yes, n=no) who knows              
Enter y or n.
Is it raining? (y=yes, n=no) y
It's raining!
Is it raining? (y=yes, n=no) n
It's not raining anymore.

Unlike setting the condition to False, breaking the loop ends it immediately.

>>> while True:
...     break
...     print("This is never printed.")
...
>>>

Python doesn't have until loops. If we need an until loop, we can use while not:

raining = False
while not raining:
    print("It's not raining.")
    if input("Is it raining? (y/n) ") == 'y':
        raining = True
print("It's raining!")

Let's say we have a list of things we want to print. To print each item in stuff, we could just do a bunch of prints:

stuff = ['hello', 'hi', 'how are you doing', 'im fine', 'how about you']

print(stuff[0])
print(stuff[1])
print(stuff[2])
print(stuff[3])
print(stuff[4])

The output of the program is like this:

hello
hi
how are you doing
im fine
how about you

But this is only going to print five items, so if we add something to stuff, it's not going to be printed. Or if we remove something from stuff, we'll get an error saying "list index out of range".

We could also create an index variable, and use a while loop:

>>> stuff = ['hello', 'hi', 'how are you doing', 'im fine', 'how about you']
>>> length_of_stuff = len(stuff)  # len(stuff) is 5
>>> index = 0
>>> while index < length_of_stuff:
...     print(stuff[index])
...     index += 1
... 
hello
hi
how are you doing
im fine
how about you
>>> 

But there's len() and an index variable we need to increment and a while loop and many other things to worry about. That's a lot of work just for printing each item.

This is when for loops come in:

>>> for thing in stuff:
...     # this is repeated for each element of stuff, that is, first
...     # for stuff[0], then for stuff[1], etc.
...     print(thing)
... 
hello
hi
how are you doing
im fine
how about you
>>> 

Without the comments, that's only two simple lines, and one variable. Much better than anything else we tried before.

>>> for thing in stuff:
...     print(thing)
... 
hello
hi
how are you doing
im fine
how about you
>>> 

Note that for thing in stuff: is not same as for (thing in stuff):. Here the in keyword is just a part of the for loop and it has a different meaning than it would have if we had thing in stuff without a for. Trying to do for (thing in stuff): creates an error:

>>> for (thing in stuff):
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    for (thing in stuff):
                        ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> 

Right now the while loop version might seem easier to understand for you, but later you'll realize that for loops are much easier to work with than while loops and index variables, especially in large projects. For looping is also a little bit faster than while looping with an index variable.

There's only one big limitation with for looping over lists. We shouldn't modify the list in the for loop. If we do, the results can be surprising:

>>> stuff = ['hello', 'hi', 'how are you doing', 'im fine', 'how about you']
>>> for thing in stuff:
...     stuff.remove(thing)
... 
>>> stuff
['hi', 'im fine']
>>> 

Instead, we can create a copy of stuff and loop over it.

>>> stuff = ['hello', 'hi', 'how are you doing', 'im fine', 'how about you']
>>> for thing in stuff.copy():
...     stuff.remove(thing)
... 
>>> stuff
[]
>>> 

Or if we just want to clear a list, we can use the clear list method:

>>> stuff = ['hello', 'hi', 'how are you doing', 'im fine', 'how about you']
>>> stuff.clear()
>>> stuff
[]
>>> 

If you're using Python 3.2 or older you need to use stuff[:] instead of stuff.copy() and stuff[:] = [] instead of stuff.clear(). stuff[:] is a slice of the whole list, just like stuff[0:].

• A loop means repeating something multiple times.
• While loops repeat something as long as a condition is true, and they check the condition only in the beginning.
• For loops can be used for repeating something to each item in a list.
• The break keyword can be used to interrupt the innermost loop at any time.

1. Back in "Using if, else and elif" we created a program that asked for username and password and checks them, and we made users "foo" and "bar" with passwords "biz" and "baz". Adding a new user would have required adding more code that checks the username and password. Add this to the beginning of the program:

   users = [
       ['foo', 'biz'],
       ['bar', 'baz'],
   ]

   Then rewrite the rest of the program using a for loop.

2. Make the program ask the username and password over and over again until the user enters them correctly.

3. Can you limit the number of attempts to 3?

You may use this tutorial freely at your own risk. See LICENSE.

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