3.3. While Loops¶

Our next control structure is the while loop. Like a for loop, the while loop can repeatedly execute a sequence of instructions, but instead of repeating a set number of times based on a sequence of values, the while loop repeats as long as some condition is True.

Here is a simple program that counts down from five and then says “Blastoff!”.

You can almost read the while statement as if it were English. This reads, “While n is greater than 0, display the value of n and then reduce the value of n by 1. When you get to 0, exit the while loop and display the word Blastoff!”

More formally, here is the flow of execution for a while statement:

Syntax Pattern

While loops have the form:

while <condition>:
    <body>

Python interprets this as follows:

  1. Evaluate <condition>, producing either True or False.

  2. If the condition is False, exit the while loop and continue execution below.

  3. If the condition is True, execute the statements in <body>, then return to step 1.

Visual flowchart illustrating the execution of a while loop.

Flowchart illustrating the execution of a while loop.¶

It’s worth noting here that while loops are very similar to conditionals. This is made clear if we place the flowcharts side by side:

Visual comparison of conditional and while loop structure.

Visual comparison of conditional and while loop structure.¶

Here, we have highlighted the one difference in red. The only difference between the two structures is in what happens after the execution of the body. The if statement continues to the instructions below, but the while loop returns back to check the condition again. This small structural difference results in very different behavior, but it can help you reason about the two structures and understand them similarly.

3.3.1. Infinite Loops¶

The body of the loop should change the value of one or more variables so that eventually the condition becomes false and the loop terminates. If nothing changes to make the condition become false, then the loop will repeat forever, a situation we call an infinite loop.

An endless source of amusement for programmers is the observation that the directions on shampoo, “Lather, rinse, repeat,” are an infinite loop because there is no changing condition that would ever stop you from repeating the loop.

In the case of the countdown code above, we can prove that the loop terminates because we know that the value of n is finite, and we can see that the value of n gets smaller each time through the loop, so eventually we have to get to 0.

Other times a loop might be obviously infinite. The following examples of infinite loops are not ActiveCode, because running them might crash your browser!

while True:
    print("Nothing can stop me!")

x = 4
while x > 0:
    print("x is still positive...")

Note

In most programming environments, you will be able to stop a program if it gets stuck in an infinite loop. In some cases, like running your code in an integrated development environment, there will be a “stop” button of some sort. Or if you are running your program on the command line, pressing Ctrl and C together (often written as Ctrl+C) can ends its execution.

In the browser, though, the ActiveCode environment doesn’t provide an easy way to terminate a program stuck in an infinite loop, so try to avoid writing any while practicing here!