Give an example of a loop that is to be executed a certain number of times.

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Q. Give an example of a loop that is to be executed a certain number of times.

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Concept understanding — Infinite Loop

Infinite Loop — The Intuition

Imagine you are walking along a straight road. You keep walking, and the road never ends. There is no last step, no final destination. That is the basic idea of an infinite loop — a sequence that never stops.

But here is the crucial twist: an infinite loop is not just "very long." It is endless. No matter how many steps you take, there is always another step waiting. The loop has no final element, no last iteration.

The Precise Statement

In programming and mathematics, an infinite loop is a sequence of instructions that repeats indefinitely because the condition for termination is never met — or because no termination condition exists at all.

Formally, consider a loop defined by:

An initial state $S_0$
A transition function $f$ that maps the current state to the next state: $S_{n+1} = f(S_n)$
A termination condition $T(S_n)$ that, when true, stops the loop

The loop is infinite if for every $n \geq 0$ , $T(S_n)$ is false. That is, the condition that should stop the loop never becomes true, no matter how many times the loop body executes.

Watch out

An infinite loop is not the same as a loop that runs a very large but finite number of times. If the loop will eventually stop (even after a billion iterations), it is finite. An infinite loop cannot stop.

A Simple Example

x = 1
while x > 0:
    x = x + 1

Here, $x$ starts at 1 and increases by 1 each time. Since $x$ is always positive, the condition x > 0 is always true — the loop never ends. This is an infinite loop.

Contrast with:

x = 1
while x > 0:
    x = x - 1

Here, $x$ eventually becomes 0, the condition x > 0 becomes false, and the loop stops. This is a finite loop.

Why It Matters

Infinite loops are not just a curiosity. They are:

A bug when unintended — your program freezes or hangs …

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A loop executed a fixed number of times is a counter-controlled loop — a counter runs from a start value to a limit:

SET count = 1
WHILE count <= 5
    PRINT "Hello"
    count = count + 1
END WHILE

Python equivalent and output:

for count in range(1, 6):
    print("Hello")

Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello …

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A counter-controlled loop uses a counter variable tested against a limit and incremented every pass — it runs an exact, known number of times.

The idea. When the number of repetitions is known in advance, we use a counter-controlled (definite) loop: initialise a counter, test it against the limit, do the body, increment. The three parts — initialisation, condition, update — guarantee the loop executes exactly the intended number of times and then stops (miss the update and you get an infinite loop).

Example — print "Hello" exactly 5 times

PRINT_HELLO_5_TIMES
    SET count = 1
    WHILE count <= 5
        PRINT "Hello"
        count = count + 1
    END WHILE
END

Python implementation

for count in range(1, 6):   # runs for count = 1,2,3,4,5
    print("Hello")

Expected output

Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello

Dry run

Pass	count at test	count <= 5?	Action
1	1	yes	print Hello, count → 2
2	2	yes	print Hello, count → 3

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Q.Give an example of a loop that is to be executed a certain number of times.

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