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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Breaking the running sequence - an introduction to conditional statements and loops

A program is a series of instructions which are run in sequestially - or so you'll be told when you start programming. And, indeed, that's the default - the way it is unless you write code to do something different. "A program is a series of statemnets each separated by [something] which run one after another".

But ... there are going to be times that you only want someting to be done in certain conditions. Do you say to a guest in your low-ceilinged cottage "mind your head"? You only want to do so if your guests is fairly tall (in fact, on last week's C and C++ course we decided that you do NOT need to tell very tall guests as they'll be used to ducking everywhere in their daily life!), but you don't want to insult people who are really short. So - in our code - we put a conditional statment of the form:
  if (condtion) {things to do only if true}

The example we wrote - full source code, a longer decsription that's specific to C++ and C, and sample output may be found [here].


There are time, too, where you want to keep repeating statements - "do that again" - and typically a whole series of statements, until a certain condition is met. For example, if you've eaten rather well in the run up to Christmas, and perhaps over Christmas as well, you may with to loose 2kg and see if you're healthier. Well - yes, you're healthier, but you could do with loosing anothe couple of kgs, and another couple, and so on until you reach an ideal body mass index ... and in coding terms, that's a loop. We write it of the form:
  while (condtion) {things to do only if true}
which (you'll note) is almost identical to my if statement. The difference is that when cose like this is run, the program goes back and tests the condition again once it's completed the running of the block the first time ... and it keeps doing so while the condition remains true.

The example we wrote - full source code, a longer decsription that's specific to C++ and C, and sample output may be found [here].

---OOO---


If you find your self repeating the same thing a number of times one after another in your code, you've probably got it wrong - you should be using a loop. As well as while loops, C and C++ support for loops which offer a start point - step - end point capability so that you can say "go from 1 to 12 in steps or 1" all in a single statement (and they can do much more too). In other languages, you'll find other loop statements such as loop, foreach and until.






(written 2011-04-11)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
C203 - C and C based languages - Conditionals and Loops
  [353] Wimbledon Neck - (2005-06-20)
  [962] Breaking a loop - Ruby and other languages - (2006-12-03)
  [1191] Smart English Output - via PHP and Perl ? : operator - (2007-05-18)
  [1220] for loop - how it works (Perl, PHP, Java, C, etc) - (2007-06-06)
  [1582] Ruby, C, Java and more - getting out of loops - (2008-03-19)
  [1696] Saying NOT in Perl, PHP, Python, Lua ... - (2008-07-04)
  [2002] New C Examples - pointers, realloc, structs and more - (2009-01-20)
  [2570] Function Prototypes in C - (2010-01-11)
  [3004] Increment operators for counting - Perl, PHP, C and others - (2010-10-18)
  [3121] New year, new C Course - (2011-01-05)
  [3200] How a for loop works Java, Perl and other languages - (2011-03-12)
  [3384] Loops - a comparison of goto, while and for - (2011-08-10)
  [3397] Does a for loop evaluate its end condition once, or on every iteration? - (2011-08-18)
  [4322] Learning to Program - the conditional statement (if) - (2014-11-21)
  [4323] Learning to program - Loop statements such as while - (2014-11-22)
  [4337] Learning to program sample program - past its prime, but still useful - (2014-12-02)


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C and C++ - preprocess, compile, load, run - what each step is for
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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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