A gentle introduction to for loops · Scientific computing

Oh no. Oh no no no. This is not a fun module. This will not be pleasant. But this will, very much, be necessary and incredibly empowering. Sit down, buckle up, we’re about to see what loops do.

Iteration is one of the most central, most useful, most confusing concepts there is. But without it, there is little we can do that is useful or fun. The one and only redeeming feature of iteration is that if you understand its most basic example, you have actually understood all of the more complicated ways to iterate. The point of this module is to introduce the way Julia thinks about iteration, and to show as many examples as possible.

Let us start with the simplest possible loop:

for i in [1, 2, 3]
    @info "The value of i is $(i)"
end

[ Info: The value of i is 1
[ Info: The value of i is 2
[ Info: The value of i is 3

That’s it. That’s all there is to know about iteration, but in order to move forward we need to study it; we need to study it like a kōan.

Broken down into its most fundamental components, this loop (the structure that begins at for and ends at end) is simple.

It has an opening statement: for. This means that we will repeat an action for multiple things. These multiple things are given on the first line:

i in [1, 2, 3]

But what does it means? This means that i will take all of the values in [1, 2, 3] in turn. Let’s verbally expand this: i will be 1, then i will be 2, then i will be 3. But not everywhere! No, i will only have these values inside the loop. So i has no value, unless it takes one inside the loop.

And so we need to go deeper: inside the loop. The inside of the loop is everything under the first line, and above the last line. If it sounds obvious, great. But it is important to emphasize this, as this is the space in which i exists, in the sense that this is the space where it has a value.

Currently, the inside of our loop has a single instruction: we show a string that has the value of i using interpolation as we have seen in a previous module. But we can have a loop that is arbitratily complex:

for i in [1, 2, 3]
    if i == 2
        @info "The value of i is 2"
    else
        @info "The value of i isn't 2 (it's $(i))"
    end
end

[ Info: The value of i isn't 2 (it's 1)
[ Info: The value of i is 2
[ Info: The value of i isn't 2 (it's 3)

We have no asked for a full if/else statement within our loop. This result in a more complex output, but also increases what we call the cyclomatic complexity of our program — there are more “branches” we can explore. Think of a program as a “chose your own adventure” type book: we now have a lot more possible endings.

A very crude yet surprisingly effective way to check the complexity of your code, is to look how far from the left margin your lines are starting. If they are very far away, it is time to take things out of loops or if/else statements and to write functions. We will explore how to write functions in the next section.

We can put whatever we want in a loop. Even, of course, another loop!

for i in [1, 2, 3]
    @info "i = $(i)"
    for j in [1, 2, 3]
        @info "  j = $(j)  →  i×j = $(i*j)"
    end
end

[ Info: i = 1
[ Info:   j = 1  →  i×j = 1
[ Info:   j = 2  →  i×j = 2
[ Info:   j = 3  →  i×j = 3
[ Info: i = 2
[ Info:   j = 1  →  i×j = 2
[ Info:   j = 2  →  i×j = 4
[ Info:   j = 3  →  i×j = 6
[ Info: i = 3
[ Info:   j = 1  →  i×j = 3
[ Info:   j = 2  →  i×j = 6
[ Info:   j = 3  →  i×j = 9

Notice that the value of i exists within its own loop, but also within the loop on j, because j’s loop exists within i’s. Where variables are usable is called scoping, and understanding scoping is something done through avid reading of the documentation. For now, it is safer to assume that the variables are not accessible outside their loop.

Sometimes it pays to be able to access variables outside of their loop, or to modify variables external to the loop in the loop itself. In one of the next modules, we will show an example of how to do it, using the global annotation.

Not only are the variables not accessibles, they are not defined. Using a try statement (it captures error, and we will take a deep dive into it very soon), we can verify this:

try
    j
catch error
    @info error
end

[ Info: UndefVarError(:j)

The existence of j (and of i, as well) is limited to the inside of its loop.

But what are loops good for? Now that we have established what loops are, the next module will deal with very powerful ways to iterate over objects, which is one of the most important things to do.