🔒 Loops in Python

[peak tangle]

I still don’t really understand loops, even after several attempts.
I get what while and for loops do in theory, but I struggle to know when and how to use them correctly in code.
What should I do to finally understand them?

[magic solar]

@peak tangle

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[wicked canopy]

you use loops whenever you need to iterate through something or repeat something, more or less anything, and you will do that very often while programming

have you learned about strings and lists and maybe any other collections yet?

[peak tangle]

no i learned the basics like print, operators, variables, input, if elif else and everything that has to do with that and now im stuck at loops

[wicked canopy]

you surely have seen strings

"this is a string"

[peak tangle]

Yes

[wicked canopy]

have you seen that you can .split() a string into individual words?

[peak tangle]

no i haven't learned string functions yet

[wicked canopy]

!e

my_string = "this is a string"
print(my_string)
print(my_string.split())

[magic solar]

:white_check_mark: Your 3.14 eval job has completed with return code 0.

001 | this is a string
002 | ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string']

[wicked canopy]

first line of output is the string, the second line has now turned that string into a list of strings where each string is only one word

we can use a loop to iterate through such a list

!e

my_string = "this is a string"
for word in my_string.split():
    print(word)

[magic solar]

:white_check_mark: Your 3.14 eval job has completed with return code 0.

001 | this
002 | is
003 | a
004 | string

[wicked canopy]

so now each print in the for loop prints the current word in the list that the loop is iterating through

[viral radish]

For => Use it when you know in advance how many times you want it to repeat (for ex: 5times or every element in a list)
while => use it when you don't know in advance how many times it has to be repeated

[peak tangle]

Okay thanks i will try that

[wicked canopy]

and even when you don't know how many times you will need to iterate through for still the one you will be using a lot of the time (iterating through generators, which is a more advanced concept for later, for example)

[viral radish]

indeed, I'll add that while is mostly for you want to stay in a infinite loop until a condition is true. Basic example, open a window and maintain it opened. Then if the X button is pressed boom shut the window

[wicked canopy]

yeah, while is great for loops that should end when a certain condition isn't meet anymore or an infinit loop that you you might break out of when some specific condition is meet

[magic solar]

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