Reading 9: Loops, part 1

My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up.
I don't really know what's happening down there. Who is the real hero?
- Mitch Hedberg

Overview

We've learned a lot of Python in the readings so far, but there are still a few fundamental programming constructs we haven't seen yet. In this reading we will start exploring loops, and next reading we will cover conditionals. We will complete our discussion of loops in two readings.

What a loop is

One of the basic things that programs have to be able to do is to repeat a chunk of code over and over. Sometimes there is something that changes every time we execute the chunk of code, and sometimes there isn't. For instance, we might want to print a greeting ten times. In that case, we would be executing the exact same code (print the greeting) ten times. Or we might want to print the numbers from 1 to 20, one per line. In that case, something would change each time (the number to print). Sometimes more than one thing changes each time.

In order to allow us to execute chunks of code over and over, programming languages like Python contain loop statements and syntax. Nearly every programming language has loop statements with special syntax, but unfortunately every language seems to choose different syntax for what is basically the same construct. Fortunately, Python's loop syntax is simple and easy to pick up.

Python's loop statements

Python has two kinds of loop statements: for loops and while loops. These are named after the keywords for and while. In this reading we'll teach you about for loops, because they are the most common kind of loop in Python programs. We'll teach you about while loops in a couple of readings.¹

Loops and lists

We postponed discussing loops until we learned about lists for a good reason: loops are incredibly useful when used with lists. One common code pattern of a loop used with a list looks like this:

for each element in a list,
do the following with the element,
and repeat until all the elements in the list have been processed.

Pseudocode

What we've just written is an example of what is called pseudocode. It's like code, but written for the benefit of humans, not computers. It describes a computation in English with enough detail that it could in principle be converted to a programming language like Python. Writing pseudocode can be a powerful design technique for working out a solution to a programming problem before you start the actual coding.

An example of this might be the following: for each element of the following list, print the element.

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)

When run, this will print out:

Monty
Python
and
the
Holy
Grail

(one word per line).

`for` loop syntax

The syntax of the for loop is basically the following:

for <item> in <list>:
    <chunk of code>

Both for and in are keywords (reserved words). The <item> is a variable that will refer to a particular element in the list <list>. The <list> can be either an actual list, a variable which refers to a list, or an expression which evaluates to a list.

Note

The colon character (:) at the end of the for line is required, much like at the end of a def line in a function definition.

The <chunk of code> part is called a block; it consists of one or more lines of Python code, all indented the same.²

The way the loop works is as follows.

The first element of the list <list> is assigned to the <item> variable.
The body of the loop is evaluated.
Then the next element of the list is assigned to the <item> variable and the body is evaluated again.
This continues until there are no more elements in the list.
After the for loop has completed evaluating, Python goes on to the next line after the loop.

Lists and iterables

The thing that goes in the <list> place in

for <item> in <list>:
    <chunk of code>

doesn't actually have to be a list. There are many other things that can go there, including strings and other data structures like tuples and dictionaries that we haven't seen yet. Any Python value that is an iterable can go in that place. An iterable basically means "something that can be looped over in a for loop". We'll explain this in more detail in later readings, and we'll show you how to use for loops with strings below.

A simple example

Let's revisit the simple example above:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)

We know that this will print out the words in the list, one per line. But how does it actually work?

When the loop starts, the first element of the list, which is 'Monty', gets assigned to the variable word. Then the body prints that word. Then the second element of the list ('Python') gets assigned to word, the word gets printed, and so on until all the words in the list have been printed. Once there are no more words in the list to bind to word, the for loop has finished executing.

So what Python ends up doing when it evaluates the loop is basically the following:

word = 'Monty'
print(word)
word = 'Python'
print(word)
word = 'and'
print(word)
...

but it's much easier and more concise to express this with the for loop.

The list title_words isn't altered in the for loop; Python simply fetches its elements one at a time in order and assigns then to the word variable. There is no significance to the variable name word either; we could call it w or xxx if we wanted to (as long as we changed the body of the loop accordingly), but it's a good idea to use meaningful variable names where possible.

Multiline blocks

A for loop block can consist of multiple lines, all indented the same. Let's extend our simple example:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)
    print('----')

This will print:

Monty
----
Python
----
and
----
the
----
Holy
----
Grail
----

After the block, the indentation has to go back to the previous level so Python knows that the block is finished:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)
    print('----')
print('All done!')

Loop syntax errors

Forgetting the colon

A really, really common error is to forget to put the colon character at the end of the for line:³

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words
    print(word)

Here's what will happen:

for word in title_words
                      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Like it or not, you have to put that colon in!

Bad indentation

If the for loop block has more than one line, the lines have to be indented exactly the same. Failure to do this gives you one of three syntax errors.

Too much indentation:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)
     print('----')

gives:

    print('----')
    ^
IndentationError: unexpected indent

Too little indentation:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)
   print('----')

gives:

    print('----')
                ^
IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level

Python knows that you are indenting less than the previous line, but this is only legal when there is some other code with that indent level (like the for line); here, there isn't one.

These two syntax errors are pretty obvious. But there is one more which can be extremely hard to detect. Sometimes when you're writing code in a text editor, the editor will use tab characters to indent code. Other times it might use spaces, or a combination of the two. If different lines in a block are indented using tabs on some lines and spaces on other lines, you can get syntax errors even if it looks like they're indented exactly the same!

It's hard to show you what this would look like, but let's imagine that in your editor, tab characters look like four space characters. We'll write a tab character like this: <tab> so you can see them. Consider this code:

title_words = ['Monty', 'Python', 'and', 'the', 'Holy', 'Grail']
for word in title_words:
    print(word)
<tab>print('----')

The code will look perfectly indented. But Python will give you a syntax error:

    print('----')
                ^
TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation

The reason this happens is that the line print(word) is indented using four spaces but the line print('----') is indented using a tab character. Even though these may look the same, Python considers them to be different, since Python doesn't know how many characters wide a tab character appears in your editor or terminal (since you can set this to whatever you want).

This is one reason why every Python style guide says not to use tab characters for indentation.⁴

Tabs vs. spaces

See this video to get a deeper insight into the tabs vs. spaces controversy.

Application: writing the `sum` function

We've already seen the built-in sum function:

temps = [59.6, 72.4, 68.5, 79.0, 66.4, 77.1, -126.0]
avg_temp = sum(temps) / 7
print(avg_temp)

This prints:

42.42857142857143

Now that we know how to write loops, we can write sum ourselves. Here's our first attempt.

def sum(nums):
    """Sum the elements of a list of numbers."""
    sum_nums = 0
    for n in nums:
        sum_nums = sum_nums + n
    return sum_nums

Note

Built-in functions like sum are not keywords. You can redefine them, or even use the name sum for something completely unrelated. This can lead to some very hard-to-find bugs, though, so we recommend that you don't do this. Here, we are deliberately replacing the built-in sum function with a function which does the same thing, so it's OK.

Let's test it:

temps = [59.6, 72.4, 68.5, 79.0, 66.4, 77.1, -126.0]
avg_temp = sum(temps) / 7
print(avg_temp)

This prints:

42.42857142857143

so we're good.

Aside: the `+=` operator and friends

Look at the sum function we wrote above, and in particular this line:

sum_nums = sum_nums + n

Lines of the form x = x + y are extremely common in programming. The meaning of this line is "add y to the number x". Since this is so common, there is a shortcut operator that does the same thing, but more concisely. The operator is called += and looks like this:

sum_nums += n

Similarly, there are other <op>= operators such as -=, *=, /= and so on which work the same way. So x -= y is the same as x = x - y; x *= y is the same as x = x * y etc.

We recommend that you use these operators instead of the longer forms for two reasons:

It's shorter.
It's easier to read once you get used to it.

`sum` again

Let's update our sum function with this spiffy new operator:

def sum(nums):
   """Sum the elements of a list of numbers."""
   sum_nums = 0
   for n in nums:
       sum_nums += n
   return sum_nums

And that's all we'll say about this function!

Loop terminology

At this time, it's appropriate to define some terms that are commonly used with loops:

loop body: The indented block of code that is executed multiple times in a loop.
iteration: A single pass through the loop body.
iterate over: Go through a data structure (e.g. a list) element-by-element, executing the loop body on each element.
iterable: A Python data structure (such as a list) that can be iterated over in a loop.

Don't worry if these definitions don't seem crystal clear to you at this point. As we learn more about what kinds of data can be used in a for loop it will all become clear.

Loop pitfall

In a for loop body, it's not a good idea to manually change either the loop variable or the list being iterated over in the body of the loop. The main reason is that what this does is hard to predict unless you really understand Python well. Python is changing the loop variable for you on every iteration of the loop body, so you shouldn't need to change it yourself. And if you change the list being iterated over, the loop may finish earlier or later than you expected, or behave in other non-intuitive ways.

Note

There will be problems on the assignments exploring this and other pitfalls.

Loops and strings

We mentioned above that in the for loop syntax, which we wrote as:

for <item> in <list>:
    <chunk of code>

the <list> part could actually be things other than lists. One such thing is a string. If you loop over a string in a for loop, you are iterating over the characters.

for char in 'Python':
    print(char)

This will print:

P
y
t
h
o
n

In each iteration of the for loop, the next character of the string Python is assigned to the variable char.

So even though a string is not a list, it can behave like one when iterated over in a for loop. We already know that both lists and strings are what Python calls sequences, so you might think that any Python sequence can be looped over in a for loop. And that is in fact the case. (We will soon see that even some non-sequences can be looped over in a for loop.)

Nested loops

You are allowed to put one for loop inside another. This is called a nested loop and is actually quite common. Here's a simple example:

title = ['Monty', 'Python']
for word in title:
    for char in word:
        print(char)

The first for loop starts on line 2. Its loop body consists of lines 3 and 4, which is also a for loop. We say that the for loop starting from line 2 is the "outer" for loop and the one starting from line 3 is the "inner" for loop. Notice that the loop body of the inner for loop (line 4) is indented twice: once because it's in the loop body of the outer for loop and once because it's also in the loop body of the inner for loop.

In the first iteration of the outer for loop, the variable word is 'Monty'. Then in the inner for loop, the variable char is 'M', then 'o', etc. Once all the characters in 'Monty' have been processed, the variable word in the outer for loop becomes 'Python', and then in the inner for loop the variable char becomes 'P', 'y', etc. Running this code gives this result:

M
o
n
t
y
P
y
t
h
o
n

We can write code that is inside the first loop but which comes after the nested loop. That code is executed once the nested loop is finished executing.

title = ['Monty', 'Python']
for word in title:
    for char in word:
        print(char)
    print('---')  # executed after nested loop finishes

Running this code gives this result:

M
o
n
t
y
---
P
y
t
h
o
n
---

You can nest loops as deeply as you like, though it's pretty rare to see loops nested more than two deep.

Coming up

We have more to say about loops, and in particular, Python's other loop construct, the while loop. We'll get to that shortly, but in the next reading we will talk about conditionals (if statements), another fundamental building block of computer programs.

If you know other programming languages like C, C++ or Java, be aware that Python's for loop is quite different from the for loop construct in those languages. ↩
Blocks are found in many other places in Python besides loops. The body of a function, for instance, is a block. ↩
I've been programming in Python for years and I still make this mistake from time to time. ↩
Any decent text editor will allow you to configure it so that when you hit the tab key, four spaces are inserted. We strongly recommend that you figure out how to do this, and do it. It will save you a lot of time chasing down dumb syntax errors. If you're using Visual Studio Code, don't worry: it converts tabs to spaces automatically when editing Python code (assuming you installed the ms-python Python extension or something equivalent). ↩

Reading 9: Loops, part 1

Overview

What a loop is

Python's loop statements

Loops and lists

for loop syntax

A simple example

Multiline blocks

Loop syntax errors

Forgetting the colon

Bad indentation

Application: writing the sum function

Aside: the += operator and friends

sum again

Loop terminology

Loop pitfall

Loops and strings

Nested loops

Coming up

`for` loop syntax

Application: writing the `sum` function

Aside: the `+=` operator and friends

`sum` again