Loops

Flow Control

By Kevin McAleer,    4 Minutes

For Loops

Often we want to run a piece of code a specific number of times.

We can use the for statement to run a block of code a number of times:

for i in range(100):
    print('i is:',i)

In this example, the loop will start by assign the variable i the value 0, and then run the block of code print('i is:',i) which will print out:

i is 0

Parameters / Arguments

Parameters, also known as arguments are variables that act as inputs into a function. We’ll look at functions shortly. An example of an argument is the value 100 that we just used in in the range function. In some programming languages there is a difference between an argument (a literal value like 100), and a parameter that is a variable (such as a that refers to another value). MicroPython doesn’t make such a distinction.

• Arguments can be values or variables
• Arguments are separated by commas
• Arguments are positional - the order the arguments are provided should match the order the function expects
• Arguments can be named, in which case the order doesn’t matter
• Arguments can be optional

The range() Function

The range function can take one, two or three parameters: range(start «optional», end, steps «optional»)

The range() Function with one parameter

The range() function returns a sequence of numbers, starting from 0 by default, and increments by 1 until the end number is reached.

Example

for i in range(100):
    print(i)

The range() Function with two parameters

If two parameters are provided, the range() function starts from start value and increments in steps of 1 until the end value is reached (its actually the end value -1).

Example

for i in range(50,200):
    print(i)

The range() Function with three parameters

If three parameters are provided, the range() function starts from start value and increments in steps of the steps value until the end value is reached (again, the end value -1).

Example

for i in range(50,200,10):
    print(i)

The while loop

if we want to run a block of code many times, based on whether or not a condition is True or False, we can use the while loop.

You’ll often see this to run blocks of code indefinitely on MicroControllers as we may want to run the code forever or until the device is reset.

Example

while True:
    print('hello')

The while loop is particularly useful in MicroPython as we may want to check the status of a sensor or externally connected device.

Example

import machine

button = machine.Pin(0, machine.Pin.IN)

while button.value() == 0:
    print('button is not pressed')

In this example we use the machine library to access the general purpose input/output pins (also known as GPIO pins). We assign pin 0 to the button variable and also define the pin as an input put using the machine.Pin.IN parameter.

The progam will keep printing the button is not pressed until button is pressed and returns a 1 value.

Control statements

Break, Continue, Pass