Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

5.10. Sentinel-Controlled Repetition

Let us generalize Section 5.9’s class-average problem.

Develop a class-averaging program that processes grades for an arbitrary number of students each time it is run.

In the previous class-average example, the problem statement specified the number of students, so the number of grades (10) was known in advance. In this example, no indication is given of how many grades are to be input. The program must process an arbitrary number of grades. How can it determine when to stop the input of grades? How will it know when to calculate and print the class average?

One way to solve this problem is to use a special value called a sentinel value (also called a signal value, a dummy value or a flag value) to indicate ...