The
while
loop we were using above have three elements common for most of the
loops.
Most of them start by initializing a variable. We used a parameter
variable called
iN
in
CountDown
, which is obviously initialized during the function call.
Most of them have a test, or condition, that depends on that variable
Inside the loop most of them do something to that variable, like
increment or decrement it.
This type of loop is so common that there is an alternate loop
statement,
called
for
, that expresses it more concisely. The general syntax looks like this:
for ( INITIALIZER;
CONDITION; INCREMENTOR )
{
BODY
}
This statement is exactly
equivalent to
INITIALIZER;
while ( CONDITION )
{
BODY
INCREMENTOR
}
except that it is more concise and, since it puts all the loop-related
statements
in one place, it is easier to read. For example:
for (
int i = 0; i < 4
; i++ )
{
ShowText ( i );
}
is
equivalent to
int i =
0;
while ( i < 4 )
{
ShowText ( i );
i++;
}
You may notice that I used an integer variable called
i
in the example above. It is common to use simple variable names like
i
,
j
,
k
and so on in
for
loops. It is also possible to have embedded loops like this:
for (
int i = 0; i < 4
; i++ )
{
for (
int j = 0; j < 3
; j++ )
{
ShowText ( i * j );
}
}
Historical Note: The i, j, k convention actually came from the first
commercial high level scientific language, Fortran 2. (Fortran 1 was
what we would now call “beta” software.) In Fortran 2 all integer
variables, and only integer
s had to begin with i, j, or k.
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