3. Control Structures

In some of the sample programs so far, you’ve seen keywords like for and if that we haven’t explained yet. You might have gleaned some idea of their meaning already by carefully considering how they might produce the program outputs you saw. These keywords, along with while, are known as control structures, and they are present everywhere in real programs. We’ll look at their formal definitions and more examples of their use here, as they’ll let us write much more powerful, useful programs and perform more complex analyses.

• 3.1. For Loops
• 3.2. Conditionals
  • 3.2.1. Alternative execution
  • 3.2.2. Chained conditionals
  • 3.2.3. Nested Blocks
• 3.3. While Loops
  • 3.3.1. Infinite Loops
• 3.4. Booleans
  • 3.4.1. Comparison Operators
  • 3.4.2. Logical Operators
• 3.5. Loop Control Keywords
  • 3.5.1. Exiting a Loop with break
  • 3.5.2. Skipping to the Next Iteration with continue
• 3.6. Common Loop Patterns
  • 3.6.1. Counting and Summing Loops
  • 3.6.2. Minimum and Maximum Loops
• 3.7. Good Coding Practices: Debugging
  • 3.7.1. Syntax Errors
  • 3.7.2. Runtime Errors
  • 3.7.3. Semantic Errors
  • 3.7.4. Print Debugging
• 3.8. Glossary