Jack Wallen has us spinning in circles:
What is a loop? Other than a fruity breakfast cereal, a loop is a portion of code that repeats a set number of times until a desired process is complete.
Here’s an example of a loop that many can relate to. You go to the ATM, insert your card, and start with your transaction. First, you check your balance, then you remove money from your account. The loop keeps running with each transaction until you tell the ATM you are finished.
Read on for loop examples, though for is definitely much more common and popular than while. I’d also recommend learning a bit about list comprehensions, which are a way of turning a for loop into a one-line operation: [f(x) for x in my_list] is a simple example: for each row in my_list, perform function f() with that row’s value as the input. Then, take all of the results of f(x) and stick them together in a new list.