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T U T O R I A L

Car Payment
9
Calculator Application
Introducing the Do While...Loop
and Do Until...Loop Repetition
Statements

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Outline

9.1 Test-Driving the Car Payment Calculator

Application
9.2 Do While...Loop Repetition Statement
9.3 Do Until...Loop Repetition Statement
9.4 Constructing the Car Payment Calculator
Application

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Objectives

In this tutorial you will learn:

■ Use the Do While...Loop and
Do Until...Loop repetition statements to
execute statements in an application repeatedly.
■ Use counter-controlled repetition.
■ Display information in ListBoxes.
■ Concatenate strings.

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9.1 Test-Driving the Car Payment
Calculator Application
Application Requirements

Typically, banks offer car loans for periods ranging from two to five
years. Borrowers repay the loans in monthly installments. The
amount of each monthly payment is based on the length of the
loan, the amount borrowed and the interest rate. Create an
application that allows the customer to enter the price of a car, the
down-payment amount and the annual interest rate of the loan.
The application should display the loan’s duration in months and
the monthly payments for two-, three-, four- and five-year loans.
The variety of options allows the user to easily compare
repayment plans and choose the most appropriate.

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Test-Driving the Car Payment
Calculator Application

■ Note the new GUI control—the ListBox control,

which allows users to view and/or select from multiple
items in a list (Fig. 9.1).

ListBox control

Figure 9.1 | Car Payment Calculator application before data has been entered.

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Test-Driving the Car Payment
Calculator Application (Cont.)

■ Enter data to test the application (Fig. 9.2).

Figure 9.2 | Car Payment Calculator application after data has been entered.

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Test-Driving the Car Payment
Calculator Application (Cont.)

■ Click the Calculate Button.

■ The application displays the monthly payment
amounts in the ListBox (Fig. 9.3) in a tabular format.

Results displayed in tabular format

Figure 9.3 | Car Payment Calculator application displaying calculation results.

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9.2 Do While...Loop Repetition Statement

■ A repetition statement can repeat actions,

depending on the value of a condition.
■ If you go to the grocery store with a list of items to
purchase, you go through the list until you have
each item:
Do while there are more items on my shopping list
Put next item in cart
Cross it off my list

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9.2 Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ Using a Do While...Loop statement, this code

finds the first power of 3 greater than 50.
Dim product As Integer = 3
Do While product <= 50
product *= 3
Loop
■ The condition in the Do While...Loop
statement, product <= 50, is referred to as the
loop-continuation condition.
■ When the loop-continuation condition becomes
false, the Do While...Loop statement finishes
executing.
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Good Programming Error

Provide in the body of every Do While...Loop
statement an action that eventually causes the condition
to become false. If you do not, the repetition statement
never terminates, causing an error called an infinite loop.
Such an error causes the application to “hang up.” When
an infinite loop occurs in your application, return to the
IDE and select Debug > Stop Debugging.

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9.2 Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The UML activity diagram in Fig. 9.4 illustrates the

flow of control in the preceding Do While...Loop
repetition statement.

Figure 9.4 | Do While...Loop repetition statement UML activity diagram.

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9.2 Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The transition arrow emerging from the action

state points back to the merge, creating a loop.
■ The UML’s diamond-shaped merge symbol joins
two flows of activity into one.

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9.3 Do Until...Loop Repetition Statement

■ These statements describe the repetitive actions that

occur during a shopping trip:
Do until there are no more items on my shopping list Put
next item in cart
Cross it off my list
■ Statements in the body of a Do Until...Loop are
executed repeatedly for as long as the loop-
termination condition remains False.
– This is known as a loop-termination condition.

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9.3 Do Until...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ Using a Do Until...Loop, this code finds the first

power of 3 larger than 50:
Dim product As Integer = 3
Do Until product > 50
product *= 3
Loop

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Good Programming Error

Failure to provide the body of a Do Until...Loop
statement with an action that eventually causes the
condition in the Do Until...Loop to become true
creates an infinite loop.

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9.3 Do Until...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The UML activity diagram in Fig. 9.5 illustrates the

flow of control for the Do Until...Loop repetition
statement.

Figure 9.5 | Do Until...Loop repetition statement UML activity diagram.

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9.4 Constructing the Car Payment
Calculator Application

When the user clicks the Calculate Button

Initialize loan length to two years
Clear the ListBox of any previous calculation results
Add a header to the ListBox

Get down payment from a TextBox

Get sticker price from a TextBox
Get annual interest rate from a TextBox

Calculate loan amount (sticker price – down payment)

Calculate monthly interest rate (annual interest rate / 12)

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9.4 Constructing the Car Payment
Calculator Application (Cont.)

Do while loan length is less than or equal to five years

Convert the loan length in years to number of months

Calculate monthly payment based on loan amount, monthly

interest rate and loan length in months

Insert result into ListBox

Increment loan length in years by one year

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Action/Control/Event (ACE) Table for the
Car Payment Calculator
■ Use an ACE table to convert pseudocode into Visual
Basic (Fig. 9.6).
Action Control Event
Label all the application’s controls PriceLabel, Application is run
downPaymentLabel,
interestLabel

calculateButton Click

Initialize loan length to two years

Clear the ListBox of any previous calculation paymentsListBox

results

Add a header to the ListBox paymentsListBox

Get down payment from a TextBox downPaymentTextBox

Get sticker price from a TextBox PriceTextBox

Get interest rate from a TextBox interestTextBox

Figure 9.6 | Car Payment Calculator application ACE table. Part (1 of 2.)

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Action/Control/Event (ACE) Table for the
Car Payment Calculator (Cont.)

Action Control Event

Get interest rate from a TextBox interestTextBox

Calculate loan amount

Calculate monthly interest rate

Do while loan length is less than or equal to

five years
Convert the loan length in years to
number of months

Calculate monthly payment based on

loan amount, monthly interest rate and
loan length in months

Insert result into ListBox paymentsListBox

Increment loan length in years by one

year

Figure 9.6 | Car Payment Calculator application ACE table. Part (2 of 2.)

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Adding a ListBox to the Car
Payment Calculator Application

■ Add a ListBox control from the Toolbox.

■ Change the ListBox’s Name property to

paymentsListBox. Set the Location property to
24, 166 and the Size property to 230, 94 (Fig. 9.7).

Figure 9.7 | ListBox added to Car Payment Calculator application’s Form.

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Good Programming Practice

Append the ListBox suffix to all ListBox control names.

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GUI Design Tip

A ListBox should be large enough to display all of its
contents or large enough that scrollbars can be used
easily.

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Using Code to Change a ListBox’s Contents

■ Double click the Calculate Button to generate the

empty event handler (Fig. 9.8).
■ Content can be added and deleted from the ListBox by
using its Items property.
– The Items property returns an object that contains a list of
items displayed in the ListBox.

Figure 9.8 | Clearing the contents of a ListBox.

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Using Code to Change a
ListBox’s Contents (Cont.)

■ The ListBox displays the number of monthly payments

and the amount per payment.
■ To clarify what information is being displayed, a line of text
—called a header—is added to the ListBox by the
Method Add (lines 10–11 of Fig. 9.9)

Figure 9.9 | Adding a header to a ListBox.

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GUI Design Tip

Use headers in a ListBox when you are displaying
tabular data. Adding headers improves readability by
describing the information that is displayed in the
ListBox.

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Using Code to Change a
ListBox’s Contents (Cont.)

■ The ampersand symbol (&) is called the string-

concatenation operator. This operator combines
its two operands into one string value.
■ The constant ControlChars.Tab inserts a tab
character into the string.

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Declaring Variables and Retrieving User Input

■ The calculation requires the length in months, but the

loop-continuation condition uses the number of years
(Fig. 9.10).

Variables to store the length

of the loan
Variables to store user input

Variables to store
calculation results

Figure 9.10 | Variables for the Car Payment Calculator application.

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Declaring Variables and Retrieving
User Input (Cont.)

■ Note that line 26 (Fig. 9.11) divides the interest rate

by 100 to obtain the decimal equivalent
– For example, 5% becomes .05

Figure 9.11 | Retrieving input in the Car Payment Calculator application.

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Declaring Variables and Retrieving
User Input (Cont.)

■ The application computes the amount of the loan by

subtracting the down payment from the price.
■ These calculations need to occur only once, so they
are placed before the Do While...Loop statement
(Fig. 9.12).

Figure 9.12 | Determining amount borrowed and monthly interest rate.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement

■ After you type line 33 and press Enter, the IDE will
close the repetition statement by adding the keyword
Loop in line 35 (Fig. 9.13).

Figure 9.13 | Loop-continuation condition.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ This loop is an example of counter-controlled

repetition.
– This uses a counter (years) to control the number of
times that a set of statements executes.
– Counter-controlled repetition also is called definite
repetition, because the number of repetitions is known
before the repetition statement begins.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The number of months changes with each iteration of

this loop, and the calculation result changes based on
the length of the payment period (Fig. 9.14).

Figure 9.14 | Converting the loan duration from years to months.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The Pmt function returns a Double value that specifies

the monthly payment amount on a loan for a constant
interest rate and a given time period (Fig. 9.15).
■ Borrowed amounts are represented by negative
values.

Figure 9.15 | Pmt function returns monthly payment.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The number of monthly payments and the monthly

payment amounts are displayed beneath the header
in the ListBox.
■ String.Format is used to display
monthlyPayment in currency format (Fig. 9.16).

Figure 9.16 | Displaying the number of months and the amount of each monthly
payment.

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Calculating the Monthly Payment Amounts with
a Do While...Loop Repetition Statement (Cont.)

■ The counter variable years is incremented in each

iteration until it equals 6 (Fig. 9.17).
■ Then the loop-continuation condition (years <= 5)
evaluates to False and the repetition ends.

Figure 9.17 | Incrementing the counter.

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Outline

■ Figure 9.18 presents the source code for the application.

(1 of 3 )
1 Public Class CarPaymentCalculatorForm
2 ' handles Calculate Button's Click event
3 Private Sub calculateButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
4 ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles calculateButton.Click
5
6 Dim years As Integer = 2 ' repetition counter
7 Dim months As Integer = 0 ' payment period
8 Dim price As Decimal = 0 ' car price
9 Dim downPayment As Decimal = 0 ' down payment
10 Dim interest As Double = 0 ' interest rate
11 Dim monthlyPayment As Decimal = 0 ' monthly payment
12 Dim loanAmount As Decimal = 0 ' cost after down payment
13 Dim monthlyInterest As Double = 0 ' monthly interest rate
14
15 ' remove text displayed in ListBox
16 paymentsListBox.Items.Clear() Clear the ListBox

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 38
Outline

(2 of 3 )
17
18 ' add header to ListBox
19 paymentsListBox.Items.Add("Months" & ControlChars.Tab & _
20 ControlChars.Tab & "Monthly Payments") Add a header to the ListBox
21
22 ' retrieve user input and assign values
23 ' to their respective variables
24 downPayment = Val(downPaymentTextBox.Text)
25 price = Val(priceTextBox.Text)
26 interest = Val(interestTextBox.Text) / 100
27
28 ' determine amount borrowed and monthly interest rate
29 loanAmount = price - downPayment
30 monthlyInterest = interest / 12
31

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Outline

(3 of 3 )
32 ' calculate payments for two, three, four and five year loans
33 Do While years <= 5 Do While...Loop repeats its
34 ' calculate payment period body while years is less than or
35 months = 12 * years equal to 5
36
37 ' calculate monthly payment using Pmt Calculate term in months
38 monthlyPayment = _
39 Pmt(monthlyInterest, months, -loanAmount) Calculate monthly
40 payment amount
41 ' display payment value
42 paymentsListBox.Items.Add(months & ControlChars.Tab & _
43 ControlChars.Tab & String.Format("{0:C}", _
44 monthlyPayment)) Display number of months
and monthly payment
45
amount
46 years += 1 ' increment counter
47 Loop Increment counter years so
48 End Sub ' calculateButton_Click the loop-continuation
49 End Class ' CarPaymentCalculatorForm condition eventually becomes
false

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Inc. All rights reserved.