Loops

Introduction#

Loops are a fundamental aspect of programming. They allow programmers to create code that repeats for some given number of repetitions, or iterations. The number of iterations can be explicit (6 iterations, for example), or continue until some condition is met (‘until Hell freezes over’).

This topic covers the different types of loops, their associated control statements, and their potential applications in PHP.

Syntax#

for (init counter; test counter; increment counter) { /* code */ }
foreach (array as value) { /* code */ }
foreach (array as key => value) { /* code */ }
while (condition) { /* code */ }
do { /* code */ } while (condition);
anyloop { continue; }
anyloop { [ anyloop …] { continue int; } }
anyloop { break; }
anyloop { [ anyloop …] { break int; } }

Remarks#

It is often useful to execute the same or similar block of code several times. Instead of copy-pasting almost equal statements loops provide a mechanism for executing code a specific number of times and walking over data structures. PHP supports the following four types of loops:

for
while
do..while
foreach

To control these loops, continue and break statements are available.

for

The for statement is used when you know how many times you want to execute a statement or a block of statements.

The initializer is used to set the start value for the counter of the number of loop iterations. A variable may be declared here for this purpose and it is traditional to name it $i.

The following example iterates 10 times and displays numbers from 0 to 9.

for ($i = 0; $i <= 9; $i++) {
    echo $i, ',';
}

# Example 2
for ($i = 0; ; $i++) {
  if ($i > 9) {
      break;
  }
  echo $i, ',';
}

# Example 3
$i = 0;
for (; ; ) {
    if ($i > 9) {
        break;
    }
    echo $i, ',';
    $i++;
}

# Example 4
for ($i = 0, $j = 0; $i <= 9; $j += $i, print $i. ',', $i++);

The expected output is:

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,

foreach

The foreach statement is used to loop through arrays.

For each iteration the value of the current array element is assigned to $value variable and the array pointer is moved by one and in the next iteration next element will be processed.

The following example displays the items in the array assigned.

$list = ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry'];

foreach ($list as $value) {
    echo "I love to eat {$value}. ";
}

The expected output is:

I love to eat apple. I love to eat banana. I love to eat cherry.

You can also access the key / index of a value using foreach:

foreach ($list as $key => $value) {
    echo $key . ":" . $value . " ";
}

//Outputs - 0:apple 1:banana 2:cherry

By default $value is a copy of the value in $list, so changes made inside the loop will not be reflected in $list afterwards.

foreach ($list as $value) {
    $value = $value . " pie";
}
echo $list[0]; // Outputs "apple"

To modify the array within the foreach loop, use the & operator to assign $value by reference. It’s important to unset the variable afterwards so that reusing $value elsewhere doesn’t overwrite the array.

foreach ($list as &$value) { // Or foreach ($list as $key => &$value) {
    $value = $value . " pie";
}
unset($value);
echo $list[0]; // Outputs "apple pie"

You can also modify the array items within the foreach loop by referencing the array key of the current item.

foreach ($list as $key => $value) {
    $list[$key] = $value . " pie";
}
echo $list[0]; // Outputs "apple pie"

break

The break keyword immediately terminates the current loop.

Similar to the continue statement, a break halts execution of a loop. Unlike a continue statement, however, break causes the immediate termination of the loop and does not execute the conditional statement again.

$i = 5;
while(true) {
    echo 120/$i.PHP_EOL;
    $i -= 1;
    if ($i == 0) {
        break;
    }
}

This code will produce

but will not execute the case where $i is 0, which would result in a fatal error due to division by 0.

The break statement may also be used to break out of several levels of loops. Such behavior is very useful when executing nested loops. For example, to copy an array of strings into an output string, removing any # symbols, until the output string is exactly 160 characters

$output = "";
$inputs = array(
    "#soblessed #throwbackthursday",
    "happy tuesday",
    "#nofilter",
    /* more inputs */
);
foreach($inputs as $input) {
    for($i = 0; $i < strlen($input); $i += 1) {
        if ($input[$i] == '#') continue;
        $output .= $input[$i];
        if (strlen($output) == 160) break 2; 
    }
    $output .= ' ';
}

The break 2 command immediately terminates execution of both the inner and outer loops.

do…while

The do...while statement will execute a block of code at least once - it then will repeat the loop as long as a condition is true.

The following example will increment the value of $i at least once, and it will continue incrementing the variable $i as long as it has a value of less than 25;

$i = 0;
do {
    $i++;
} while($i < 25);

echo 'The final value of i is: ', $i;

The expected output is:

The final value of i is: 25

continue

The continue keyword halts the current iteration of a loop but does not terminate the loop.

Just like the break statement the continue statement is situated inside the loop body. When executed, the continue statement causes execution to immediately jump to the loop conditional.

In the following example loop prints out a message based on the values in an array, but skips a specified value.

$list = ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry'];

foreach ($list as $value) {
    if ($value == 'banana') {
        continue;
    }
    echo "I love to eat {$value} pie.".PHP_EOL;
}

The expected output is:

I love to eat apple pie.
I love to eat cherry pie.

The continue statement may also be used to immediately continue execution to an outer level of a loop by specifying the number of loop levels to jump. For example, consider data such as

Fruit	Color	Cost
Apple	Red	1
Banana	Yellow	7
Cherry	Red	2
Grape	Green	4

In order to only make pies from fruit which cost less than 5

$data = [
    [ "Fruit" => "Apple",  "Color" => "Red",    "Cost" => 1 ],
    [ "Fruit" => "Banana", "Color" => "Yellow", "Cost" => 7 ],
    [ "Fruit" => "Cherry", "Color" => "Red",    "Cost" => 2 ],
    [ "Fruit" => "Grape",  "Color" => "Green",  "Cost" => 4 ]
];

foreach($data as $fruit) {
    foreach($fruit as $key => $value) {
        if ($key == "Cost" && $value >= 5) {
            continue 2;
        }
        /* make a pie */
    }
}

When the continue 2 statement is executed, execution immediately jumps back to $data as $fruit continuing the outer loop and skipping all other code (including the conditional in the inner loop.

while

The while statement will execute a block of code if and as long as a test expression is true.

If the test expression is true then the code block will be executed. After the code has executed the test expression will again be evaluated and the loop will continue until the test expression is found to be false.

The following example iterates till the sum reaches 100 before terminating.

$i = true;
$sum = 0;

while ($i) {
    if ($sum === 100) {
        $i = false;
    } else {
        $sum += 10;
    }
}
echo 'The sum is: ', $sum;

The expected output is:

The sum is: 100