Chapter - 4

Control Structures
Conditional and looping constructs
 Introduction
Tools that help in better understanding of the problem
statement and decisions to be made accordingly are:

1. Flow charts
2. Pseudo code
3. Decision tree

Flow charts
It is the pictorial representation of the sequence of steps
and decisions needed to perform a task.
Flow chart depicts the “flow” of a program.
Commonly used symbols in flow chart
Symbol Name

Start/Stop

Process

Input/Output

Decision

Connection (Flow Line)

Example of Flow chart
Example of Flow chart
 Program Control Flow
Program control flow is the order in which individual
statements or instructions are executed.

The control flow of a program in any

programming language can be broadly
classified into three categories.

1. Sequence
2. Selection/Decision
3. Iteration/Loop
 Program Control Flow
1. Sequence
The statements in the programs are
executed in an order one line at a time
from the top to the bottom of your
program.
2. Selection/Decision
The set of statements are executed based
on the condition and then change the
course of program.
3. Iteration/Loop
Loops are used to repeatedly execute the
same statement(s) in a program.
1. Sequence
 2. Selection
(Decision making)
There are four types of decision-making
statements in python:

a. if statement
b. if-else statement
c. if-elif-else statement
d. Nested if-else statement
 2. Selection (Decision making)
a. if statement

if the condition is True, then the statement written after,

is executed.

Syntax:
if condition:
statement(s)

e.g.
if x > 0:
print (“x is positive”)
 2. Selection (Decision making)
b. if-else statement

if the condition is True, then the statement written after, if is

executed. If False, statement(s) written after else is executed
Syntax:
if condition:
statement(s)
else:
statement(s)

e.g.
if age >= 18:
print (“Can Vote”)
else:
print (“Can’t Vote”)
 2. Selection (Decision making)
c. if-elif-else statement

It is used for multiple test condition.

In the chained conditions, each condition is checked in

order if previous is False then next is checked, and so on.
If one of them is True then corresponding block of
statement(s) are executed and the statement ends.

If none is true, then else block gets executed if provided.

If more than one condition is true, then only the first true
option block gets executed.
 2. Selection (Decision making)
Syntax:
if condition:
statement(s)
elif condition:
statement(s)
elif condition:
statement(s)
else:
statement(s)
e.g.
if per>=90:
print (“A”)
elif per>=70 and per<90:
print (“B”)
elif per>=50 and per<70:
print (“C”)
else
print (“D”)
 2. Selection (Decision making)
d. Nested if-else statement

It is possible to have a condition within another condition.

Such conditions are known as Nested Condition.

Example:

num=int(input("Enter number"))
if (num>=0):
if (num==0):
print("Zero")
else:
print("Positive number")
else:
print("Negative number")
 3. Iteration
Loops are used to repeatedly execute the same code
in a program.

Python provides two types of looping constructs:

a) while loop
b) for loop
 3. Iteration
a) while loop

The statement with keyword while followed by boolean

condition followed by colon (:).
What follows next is block of statement(s).

The statement(s) in BLOCK 1 keeps on executing till

condition in while remains True;
once the condition becomes False and if the else clause is
written in while, then else will get executed.

While loop may not execute even once, if the condition

evaluates to false, initially, as the condition is tested before
entering the loop.
 3. Iteration
Syntax:
while condition: # condition is Boolean expression
returning True or False
STATEMENTs
[else: # optional part of while
STATEMENTs ]

Example
a loop to print nos. from 1 to 10
i=1
while (i <=10):
print (i, end=‘ ‘)
i = i+1
while Loop with else

e.g.
x=1
while(x < 3):
print('inside while loop value of x is ',x)
x=x+1
else:
print('inside else value of x is ', x)

Output:
inside while loop value of x is 1
inside while loop value of x is 2
inside else value of x is 3
Nested while loop
Block of statement belonging to while can have
another while statement, i.e. a while can
contain another while.
e.g.
i=1
while(i<=3):
j=1
while(j<=i):
print(j, end=" ") # inner while loop
j=j+1 Output:
print("\n") 1

i=i+1 1 2

1 2 3
 3. Iteration
b) for loop

The for statement is used to repeat itself over a range of

values or a sequence, such as a list, string or tuple.

Its Syntax is:

for <control_variable> in <sequence/items in range>:

STATEMENT BLOCK 1
[else: # optional block
STATEMENT BLOCK 2]
 3. Iteration
for i in range(1, 11,1):
print (i, end=' ')

Output: 12345678910

The statement introduces a function range ( ),

its syntax is
range(start, stop, [step]) # step is optional
range( ) generates a list of values starting from start till stop-1.

step if given is added to the value generated, to get next value in

the list.
 3. Iteration
i is the variable, which keeps on getting a value generated by
range ( ) function, and the block of statement (s) are worked on
for each value of i. As the last value is assigned to i, the loop
block is executed last time and control is returned to next
statement.

If else is specified in for statement, then next statement

executed will be else. Now we can easily understand the result
of for statement. range( ) generates a list from 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 as
the step mentioned is 1, I keeps on getting a value at a time,
which is then printed on screen.
Apart from range( ), i (loop control variable) can take
values from string, list, dictionary, etc.

Example 1:
for letter in "Python":
print("Current letter", letter)
else:
print("End of loop")

Example 2:

num=[10,20,30,40,50]
for i in num:
print(i)
Nested for

for num in range(6):

for i in range(num):
print (num, end=" ")
print("\n")
Output:
1
1 2
1 2 3
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
 Break Statement
Break can be used to unconditionally jump out of the loop. It
terminates the execution of the loop.

Break can be used in while loop and for loop. Break is

mostly required,
when because of some external condition, we need to exit
from a loop.

Example
Output:
for letter in "Python": >>>
if (letter == "h"): P
break y
print(letter) t
 Continue Statement
This statement is used to tell Python to skip the rest of the
statements of the current loop block and to move to next
iteration, of the loop.

Continue will return back the control to the beginning of the

loop. This can also be used with both while and for
statement.
Output:
Example
>>>
P
for letter in "Python":
y
if (letter == "h"):
t
continue
o
print(letter)
n