Python While Loop Tutorial

Python While Loop Tutorial

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Python provides the popular for and while loops. Even though it is not popular as for loop the while loop is also used for different cases. Python while loop is very simple and easy to use where the while loop continues unless the given while loop condition is True. The while loop also provides the break statement, continue statement, and else statements for different cases.

while Loop Syntax

The while loop syntax is like below for the Python.

while CONDITION:
   CODE
  • CONDITION is the condition we want to check and the while loop will continue as it is True. The CONDITION is checked in every step.
  • CODE is executed unless the CONDITION is true and the loop continues.

while Loop Example

We will set the variable named a and then set the initial value as 1. Then we will check the value whether it is less than 10 and execute the “while code block” which will print the a’s current value and then increase a value by one.

a = 1

while a < 10:
   print(a)
   a += 1

The output will be like the below. We can see that the output starts from 1 and then continue to 9. When the a is increased to 10 the condition will not be met because it is not less than 10.

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9

While Loop with List

The list is a popular Python type used to store multiple items. We can use the “while loop” in order to iterate over this list. We create a counter which increased every while loop step by 1. The counter is used like a cursor that shows the current list item index. We also get the list length or item count with the len() function and check it with the “while loop”.

names = ["ismail","ahmet","ali","elif"]

counter = 0

list_length = len(names)

while counter<list_length:
   print(names[counter])
   counter+=1
ismail
ahmet
ali
elif

Break while Loop

Even the while loop provides a condition that is used to control the while loop there is also break statement which can be used to exit from the while loop. Below we will check if the variable a is equal to 5 we will exit or break from the while loop.

a = 1

while a < 10:
   print(a)
   a += 1
   if(a==5):
      break

The output will be like the below.

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Skip Next Step with Continue in while Loop

The while loop code block is executed in every iteration or step. But if we need to skip some steps of some part of the while code block for specific conditions the continue statement. The continue statement will skip to the next step or iteration without ending the while loop. In the following example, we will skip if the value can be divided into 3 without a remaining.

a = 1

while a < 10:
   a += 1
   if(a%3==0):
      continue
   print(a)

Else Statement of while Loop

Differently from other programming languages while loop implementation Python provides the else statement for the while loop. The else statement of the while loop is used when the loop ended with the condition is not True we can execute a code. In the following example when the while loop ends we will print some message to the screen.

a = 1

while a < 10:
   print(a)
   a += 1
else:
   print("The counting process reached to 10")

The output will be like below where the else statement code block is executed after the while loop code block.

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The counting process reached to 10

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