Ace the 2026 OCR GCSE Computer Science Challenge – Code Your Way to Success!

A FOR loop is a type of iteration statement that is specifically designed for a set number of repetitions. It typically includes an initialization section, a condition that is checked before each iteration, and an update statement, all of which work together to control the number of times the loop executes.

In practical terms, the structure of a FOR loop often looks like this: it initializes a counter variable, checks a condition to determine if the loop should continue, and increments (or otherwise modifies) the counter towards a predetermined goal. This makes it especially suitable for situations where the number of iterations is known beforehand, such as looping through elements in an array or a specific range of numbers.

While other types of loops, like While loops and DO...WHILE loops, are designed to repeat based on conditions that may not have a predetermined number of iterations, a FOR loop is inherently structured to iterate a specific, defined number of times. Nested loops involve placing one loop inside another and do not dictate the number of repetitions directly, instead they create multiple layers of iterations. Therefore, the FOR loop stands out in its primary utility of guaranteeing a fixed number of cycles based on the defined parameters.