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DOCUMENTATION CENTER SEARCH
New to
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Find your learning path
»
Mathematica
>
Core Language
>
Procedural Programming
>
Looping Constructs
>
While
>
BUILT-IN MATHEMATICA SYMBOL
Loops and Control Structures
Repetitive Operations
Tutorials »
|
Do
For
NestWhile
TakeWhile
LengthWhile
Nest
Fold
Select
Throw
See Also »
|
Language Overview
Looping Constructs
Procedural Programming
More About »
While
While
evaluates
test
, then
body
, repetitively, until
test
first fails to give
True
.
MORE INFORMATION
While
[
test
]
does the loop with a null body.
If
Break
is generated in the evaluation of
body
, the
While
loop exits.
Continue
exits the evaluation of
body
, and continues the loop.
Unless an explicit
Return
is used, the value returned by
While
is
Null
.
Note that in an example like
the roles of
and
are
reversed
relative to C-like programming languages.
EXAMPLES
CLOSE ALL
Basic Examples
(1)
Print and increment
n
while the condition
n
<4
is satisfied:
Print and increment
n
while the condition
n
<4
is satisfied:
In[1]:=
Scope
(2)
The body can be included as part of the test:
Break
breaks out of the
While
:
Generalizations & Extensions
(1)
Test the condition during or at the end of the loop:
Applications
(2)
Compute the GCD of two numbers:
Count the number of iterations in a fixed-point calculation:
Properties & Relations
(4)
If the test is
False
, the body is never evaluated:
While
returns
Null
:
Use
Print
to see the iterations:
Do
iterates a fixed number of times:
NestWhile
is a functional form of
While
:
SEE ALSO
Do
For
NestWhile
TakeWhile
LengthWhile
Nest
Fold
Select
Throw
TUTORIALS
Loops and Control Structures
Repetitive Operations
MORE ABOUT
Language Overview
Looping Constructs
Procedural Programming
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