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Chapter 6: While Loops


The technique of defining new methods, and defining for loops—as useful as they are—does not actually enable Karel to solve any new problems. Every time you run a program it always does exactly the same thing. Programs become a lot more useful when they can respond differently to different inputs.

As an example. Let's say you wanted to write a program to have Karel move to a wall. But you don't simply want this program to work on one world with a fixed size. You would like to write a single program that could work on any world.

Try changing the world by clicking the "Change World" dropdown above the world. For any sized world, Karel will move until it hits a wall. Notice that this feat can not be acomplished using a for loop. That would require us to know the size of the world at the time of programming.

Basic While Loop

In Karel, a while loop is used to repeat a body of code as-long-as a given condition holds. The while loop has the following general form:

while(test){
statements to be repeated
}

The control-flow of a while loop is as follows. When the program hits a while loop it starts repeating a process where it first checks if the test passes, and if so runs the code in the body.

When the program checks if the test passes, it decides if the test is true for the current state of the world. If so, the loop will run the code in the body. If the test fails, the loop is over and the program moves on.

When the program runs the body of the loop, the program executes the lines in the body one at a time. When the program arrives at the end of the while loop, it jumps back to the top of the loop. It then rechecks the test, continuing to loop if it passes. The program does not exit the loop until it gets to a check, and the test fails.

Karel has many test statements, and we will go over all of them in the next chapter. For now we are going to use a single test statement: frontIsClear() which is true if there is no wall directly infront of Karel.

Fencepost Bug

Let's modify our program above to make it more interesting. Instead of just moving to a wall, have Karel place a line of beepers, one in each square. Again we want this program to work for a world of any size:

That looks great. Except for one problem. On every world Karel doesn't place a beeper on the last square of the line (look closely). When Karel is on the last square, the program does not execute the body of the loop because the test no longer passes -- Karel is facing a wall. You might be tempted to try switching the order of the body so that Karel moves before placing a beeper. The code is editable so go try it!

There is a deeper problem that no rearrangement of the body can solve. For the world with 7 columns, Karel needs to put 7 beepers, but should only move 6 times. Since the while loop executes both lines when a test passes, how can you get the program to execute one command one more time than the other?

The bug in this program is an example of a programming problem called a fencepost error. The name comes from the fact that if you want to build a fence made of panels which have one fence post on either side, the number of fence posts is always one greater than the number of panesl. How many fence posts, for example, do you need to build a fence with 10 panels? The answer is 11, as illustrated by the following diagram:

Once you discover it, fixing this bug is actually quite easy. Before Karel stops at the end of the world, all that the program has to do is place a final beeper:


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