Section 3.4 Repetition: A Simple for
-Loop
Suppose you wanted to print the same line of text five times. Here is one way to do so:
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But imagine how many times you’d have to type the same line if you wanted to print it 100 times! Or imagine wanting to make a change to all of those lines, for example wanting two exclamation marks at the end of each output line. Here is a more elegant solution: a so-called loop:
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Try it out right now by hitting that “Run” button!
C actually supports multiple types of loops. This one is called a for
-loop; we’ll learn about the other types of loops later. We will also soon learn more about the use of the rather mysterious-looking “i
” and the line “int i;
”. For now, just think of i
as something that can hold different values. In this particular example, i
takes on values between 1 and 5, and for each value of i between 1 and 5 this loop prints out Hello, World!
. That is, Hello, World!
is printed exactly 5-times.
Activity 3.4.
Try it out by clicking on the “Run” button in the above window and verify that the same line is indeed printed 5-times.
Now modify the code so that it prints Hello, World!
10-times.
You can place multiple statements into your loops:
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Activity Activity
1. Study the code.
What do you think the above code will print to the screen? Will it print:
Hello World
3-times, then Today is Saturday
3-times?
Not quite...
Hello World. Today is Saturday.
3-times ?
Great job!
Something else?
Try again...