Have you ever come across

a song that you like so much you want to listen to it again and
again? You select the loop option so
that you can listen to it repeatedly. This action of repetition is known as
looping, and also exists in Python. In this video you'll learn to use
looping constructs when the same set of steps must be carried out many times.
Python has two different types
of looping constructs for iterating over sequences,
the For loop and the While loop. Looping is used to iterate
through the sequence and access each item inside the sequence. Let's start with a
basic example
of looping using a string. First, you declare a variable called str,
which is of type string, recall that a string in
Python is a sequence, which means you can iterate over
each character in the string. A sequence is just an ordered set. Now, let's break
apart the for
loop and discover how it works. The variable item is a placeholder
that will store the current letter in the sequence. You may also recall that you
can access any character in the sequence by its index. The For
loop is accessing it in the same way and assigning the current value
to the item variable. This allows us to access the current
character to print it for output. When the code has run, the output will
be the letters of the word, looping, each letter on its own line. Now that you know
about looping constructs
in Python, let me demonstrate how these work further using some code examples
to output an array of tasty desserts. Python offers us multiple
ways to do loops or looping. You'll now cover the For
loop as well as the While loop. Let's start with the basics
of a simple For loop. To declare a For loop,
I used the for key word. I now need a variable
to put the value into. In this case I am using i, I also use the in keyword to
specify where I want to loop over. I add a new function called range to
specify the number of items in a range. In this case, I'm using 10 as an example.
Next, I do a simple print statement
by pressing the enter key to move to a new line. I select the print function,
and within the brackets, I enter the name looping and the value
of i, then I click on the run button. The output indicates the iteration
loop through the range of 0 to 9. It's important to note
the three main points. The iteration starts 0 based on
the index of the item itself. Every for loop usually starts with 0. Most arrays
starts at 0. The reason for that is that it's
the first item in an array or the first item in the index. In this case, the last
item in
the array or index will be 9. Now, I want to change what I look through. As an
example, I will enter a simple
array above and call it favorites. To do this, I start by removing
the hash sign in front of favorites. Next, I replaced the range
function in the current for loop with favorites to look through. The i that I
declared as part of the for
loop can change to any value, and in this case I'm using item. I now change my
print statements
to include item in my print loop. I also changed the text,
I like this dessert. I click on the run button
to print the value stream. In this case, item calls each of
the five dessert titles in turn and our print statement combines
them into a sentence. The next looping option I'm
discussing is the While loop. The While loop differs
Slightly from the For loop. To demonstrate this type of loop, I first
comment out the for loop on my screen. Let's start by using the while keyword. As
in the for loop, I need to specify
a condition to make the loop over n times, depending on the value itself. First, I
need to declare a counter. I do this by typing count = 0
above my looping statement. Next, I enter count after the while
keyword followed by the < sign and the word favorites. Now I insert the function
len to
provide the length of favorites. This means the loop will run while
the count is less than the length of favorites. In other words,
while it is less than five. To print the value of
the looping statement, I press the enter key
to move to a new line. Then I select the print function, and
within brackets I enter the text, I like this dessert. The key difference here is
that I need to
use the index to access the items within the favorite array. To do this, I type
favorites and
add count to represent the index. It's important that I
now increment count so that it will essentially
match the loop statement. If I do not increment count, I'll end up
with what is called an infinite loop. This means it will just keep looping and
looping until the compiler stops
it from running out of memory. To increment the count, I press enter to
move to a new line and add count += 1. I clear my screen and
click the run button. I get the same print output as the for
loop. It's important to note that
In a standard for loop, I don't have access to the index, but I
can use the enumerate function to do that. So I changed my current for
loop statement by adding idx, and it becomes for idx Item in. Then I call the
enumerate function
with favorites in parenthesis. On the next line, to print the output,
I replace the text, I like this dessert with idx and
click the run button. The results display the index and
the value of the item within the array. Congratulations, in this video you learned
about looping constructs in Python using the For loop.