Advanced Statements: The Loops
Before finishing up the remaining two built-in JavaScript objects,
we’ll take some time to look at the advanced JS statements: the loops.
The looping statements are ones that have a conditional test, just like
the conditional if...else...
statements covered earlier. However, when the expression evaluates to
true
, the processor returns to the
same condition again at the end of each loop.
The while Loop
The simplest JavaScript loop tests a condition at the start of each loop and
continues if the expression evaluates to true
. Something in the JavaScript contained
in the loop changes at some point, forcing the expression to evaluate
to false
and the loop to terminate.
The keyword while
is used to
designate this type of loop.
In Example 3-7, one of the test expression variables is incremented with each loop until its value exceeds 10. At that point, the loop terminates.
Example 3-7. Testing a value in a condition in a while loop
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>While Loop</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ var iValue = 0; while (iValue < 10) { iValue++; document.writeln("iValue is " + iValue + "<br />"); } //]]> </script> </body> </html>
Normally, you do more with a while
loop than just increment a value, which you’ll see in more detail throughout the ...
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