CS101: Introduction to Computer Science I (2019.A.01)

A repetition structure is a control structure that repeats a statement or sequence of statements in a controlled way. Repetition structures are also referred to as loop structures. Many types of programming tasks require a repetition structure. Consider some examples.

• You want to add up the squares of the numbers from 1 to 100.
• You want to compute compound interest on an amount of money in a savings account with a fixed interest rate if it is kept there for 30 years. 
• A computer security employee wants to try every possible password in order to break into an account of a suspected spy. 
• You want to have players input moves for a turn in a game until the game is over. Our OneRowNim is such an example.

We will study several different repetition structures of Java in depth in Chapter 6. We will briefly consider the while statement here so as to be able to define methods that are more powerful and more interesting. Let us write a method that solves a slight generalization of the first problem above. We will use the while statement to sum the squares of integers from 1 to a number specified as a parameter of the method. Thus, the method call sumSquares(3) should return the value 14 since 1 ⇤ 1+2 ⇤ 2+3 ⇤ 3 = 1+4+9 = 14.

Note that in this example, the variable num gets assigned an initial value of 1 before the while statement. Note also that the boolean expression num < max in parentheses after while states the condition for which we wish to continue summing squares. Finally note that the last statement in the block following the boolean expression adds 1 to num–that is, this variable is updated at the end of the block.

The while statement is a loop statement in which the loop entry condition occurs before the loop body. It has the following general form:

When the while statement is executed, the loop entry condition is evaluated and if this evaluates to false, execution continues at the statement immediately after the loop body. If the loop entry condition evaluates to true, the loop body is executed and then the entry condition is evaluated again. The loop body continues to be executed until the loop entry condition evaluates to false.

To have a while statement accomplish a task, the variable or variables in the loop entry condition must be initialized correctly before the while statement and these variables must be correctly updated at the end of the loop body. We can refer to the initializer statement followed by a while statement as a while structure. We can restate the above guidelines as a design principle:

In pseudocode, the while structure would take the following form:

As its form suggests, the while structure is designed so that on some conditions the loop body will never be executed. Because it tests for the loop entry condition before the loop body, it is possible that the loop body is never executed. We might say that it is designed to perform 0 or more iterations.

For example, if the method call sumSquares(-3) is executed, the loop body will be skipped, because the loop entry condition num <= max is false to begin with. No iterations will be performed, and the algorithm will simply return the value 0.

Note also that in the while statement the bound test is preceded by initializer statements, and the loop body contains updater statements. The semantics of the while structure are shown in Figure 3.15.

Figure 3.15: Flowchart of the while statement and while structure.

SELF-STUDY EXERCISE 

EXERCISE 3.14 Modify the definition of the sumSquares() method to define a method named sumCubes() that sums the cubes of integers from a minimum value up to a maximum value and returns that sum. sumCubes() should have two parameters that will store the minimum and maximum values. Thus the method call sumCubes(2,3) should return 35 since 2 ⇤ 2 ⇤ 2+3 ⇤ 3 ⇤ 3 = 8+27 =