Kai-Feng Chen

National Taiwan University

PROGRAMMING &
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS2014
Lecture 02: Control flow

CONTROL FLOW

You are not always on the

same route, do you?

CONDITIONAL
EXECUTION
One definitely needs the ability to check some certain conditions
and change the behavior of the program accordingly.

Conditional statements give us this ability.

The simplest form is the if statement:
if x > 0:
print 'x is positive!'

The boolean expression (x>0) after if is called the condition.

If it is true, then the indented statement (print) gets executed.
Otherwise nothing will happen.

THE STRUCTURE
The condition,
which must be a
boolean expression.

header is ending with a colon (:)

if x > 0 :
print 'x is positive!'

HEADER
BODY
The body can
contain any number
of statements.

Body has to be indented.

Indentation is important. The lines started with the

same indentation is treated as a group. The
convention is four spaces, but this is not restricted.
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BOOLEAN EXPRESSIONS
A boolean expression is either true or false.
For example, the basic operator == compares two operands and
produces True if they are equal:

>>> 5==5
True
>>> 5==6
False

The True and False (T,F must be capital) belong to bool type:
>>> type(True)
<type 'bool'>

RELATIONAL OPERATORS
The == operator is one of the relational operators; the others are:
x
x
x
x
x

!= y
> y
< y
>= y
<= y

#
#
#
#
#

x
x
x
x
x

is
is
is
is
is

not equal to
greater than
less than y
greater than
less than or

y
y
or equal to y
equal to y

A common error is to use a single equal sign = instead of a

double equal sign ==.

There is no =< or =>.

6

LOGICAL OPERATORS
There are three logical operators: and, or, not.
The operands of the logical operators should be boolean

expressions, but Python is not very strict any nonzero number is

interpreted as True.
True
0 < x < 10
x > 0 and x < 10
False
otherwise
True
if n is multiple of 2 or 3
n % 2 == 0 or n % 3 == 0
False
otherwise

not (x > y) True

if x is less or equal to y
False
x > y

ALTERNATIVE
EXECUTION
Alternative execution with two possibilities and the condition
determines which one gets executed.

The syntax:

if x%2 == 0:
print 'x is even'
else:
print 'x is odd'

Since the condition must be true or false, exactly one of the

branches will be executed.

CHAINED
CONDITIONALS
Sometimes there are more than two possibilities one way to
express a computation like that is a chained conditional:
if x < y:
print 'x is less than y'
elif x > y:
print 'x is greater than y'
else:
print 'x and y are equal'

Exactly one branch will be executed. There is no limit on the

number of elif (else if) statements.

If there is an else, it has to be at the end.

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NESTED
CONDITIONALS
One conditional can also be nested within another. For example:
If-else block #1

if x == y:
print 'x and y are equal'
else:
If-else block #2
if x < y:
print 'x is less than y'
else:
print 'x is greater than y'
indentation of the
statements define
the blocks.

The first branch contains a simple statement.

The second branch contains another if statement,
which has two branches of its own.
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NESTED
CONDITIONALS (II)
Indentation makes the structure apparent. But nested conditionals
become difficult to read very quickly. Good to avoid them.

Logical operators often provide a way to simplify nested

conditional statements.

if 0 < x:
if x < 10:
print 'x is a positive single-digit number.'
Simplified with and:
if 0 < x and x < 10:
print 'x is a positive single-digit number.'

11

COMMENT: INDENTATION
Leading whitespace at the beginning of lines is used to define the
indentation level of the line, which is used to determine the
grouping of statements.

Due to the nature of various text editors, it is unwise to use a

mixture of spaces and tabs for the indentation.

Example of a correctly (but confusingly?) indented code:

def perm(l):
if len(l) <= 1:
return [l]
r = []
for i in range(len(l)):
s = l[:i] + l[i+1:]
p = perm(s)
for x in p:
r.append(l[i:i+1] + x)
return r
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INTERMISSION
Try the following logic operations:
>>> a = 1.0/3.0
>>> b = 1.0 - 2.0/3.0
>>> a == b
Do you see True or False? Why?
>>> not (((True and (True or False) and True) and
False) or False) and False or True
Do you see True or False? Why?

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INTERMISSION (II)
Try this kind of weird-indented programs?
print "a"
print "aa"
print "aaa"
print "aaaa"
or
x = 3
if x < 4:
print "x is smaller than 4."
if x > 1:
print "x is greater than 1."

14

Which line do you

expect to see the
(syntax) error?

INTERMISSION (III)
Try this kind of weird-indented programs?
x = y = 2
if x > 1:
if y < 4:
x += y
x += y is the same as x = x + y
y += 4 is the same as y = y + 4
y += 4
elif x + y > 1:
y = (x + y)*2
else:
x -= (y / 2)
elif y == x % 2:
y = x**2
else:
x -= y**2
print x,y
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What do you
expect to see in the
end (x,y)?

ITERATION
Computers are often used to automate repetitive tasks: repeating
identical or similar tasks.

Because iteration is so common, Python provides several language

features to make it easier:

The while statement, which can be used as general loops.

The for statement, which is usually used to run through a block
of code for each item in a list sequentially.

An example (printing 1 to 10 on the screen):

n = 1
while n <= 10:
print n
n += 1
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THE WHILE STATEMENT

Setting the initial
value to n

The condition

n = 1
while n <= 10 :
print n
n += 1

header is also ending with a colon

HEADER
BODY
n += 1 is the same as n = n + 1,
means n should be updated with n+1

The flow of execution for a while statement:

Evaluate the condition, yielding True or False.
If the condition is false, exit the while statement.
If the condition is true, execute the body and then go back to step 1.
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TERMINATION OF THE
LOOP
The loop should change some of the variables so that eventually
the condition becomes false and ends the loop (e.g. the n+=1
statement).

Otherwise the loop will repeat forever as an infinite loop.

Or use the break statement to jump out of the loop:
n = 1
while True: an infinite loop actually!
print n
if n>=10:
break jump out of the loop
n += 1

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CONTINUE THE LOOP

Break versus Continue (can be confusing for beginners):
The break statement, which should jump out of the loop can
continue to execute the next statement.

The continue statement, which should jump back to the head of

the loop, check the condition, and continue to the next iteration.

n = 0
while True:
n += 1
if n > 10:
break
if n % 2 == 0:
continue
print n
print 'the end!'

continue the loop

break the loop

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LOOP ELSE
STATEMENT
Similar to the if statement, else can be attached to the end of loop.
The code block after else will be executed if the loop ended
normally (without calling the break statement):

n = 0
m = 5 if m is not between 110, the ended normally! will be printed.
while n<10:
n += 1
print n
if n==m:
print 'n ==',m,'hit. Break the loop.'
break
else:
print 'ended normally!'
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THE PASS
STATEMENT
The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement
is required syntactically but the program requires no action.

For example:

while True:
pass # this is a do-nothing, infinite loop
n = 3
if
n == 1:
print 'One!'
elif n == 2:
print 'Two!'
elif n == 3:
print 'Three!'
else:
pass do nothing, simply a placeholder for now
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THE FOR STATEMENT

The for statement in Python differs a bit from what you may be

used to in C it iterates over the items of any sequence (a list or a

string), in the order that they appear in the sequence.

An example (iterating the letters in a string):

letters = 'bhJlmprsty'
for initial in letters: loop over the letters
print initial + 'ack',
Output:
back hack Jack lack mack pack rack sack tack yack

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ACCESSING A LIST
The for statement can access to the elements in a list.
For example:

animals = ['cat','dog','horse','rabbit','mouse']
for a in animals:
print a
odd_numbers = [1,3,5,7,9]
for n in odd_numbers:
print n
The list odd_number can be actually replaced by
a simple call to the built-in function range()
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THE RANGE() FUNCTION

If you do need to iterate over a sequence of numbers, the built-in
function range() comes in handy. It generates lists containing
arithmetic progressions:

>>> range(10)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> range(5, 10)
[5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> range(0, 10, 3)
[0, 3, 6, 9]
>>> range(-10, -100, -30)
[-10, -40, -70]
The given end point (e.g. 10) is never part of the generated list.
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RANGE() + FOR
Get a list of odd numbers:
for n in range(1,10,2):
print n

To iterate over the indices of a sequence, you can combine range()

and len() as follows:

animals = ['cat','dog','horse','rabbit','mouse']
for i in range(len(animals)):
print i,'=>',animals[i]
The function len() return the number of elements in
a list or how many characters in a string.
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A LITTLE BIT MORE

ON THE LIST
Python has a number of data types, used to group together other
values. The most versatile is the list. For example:

>>> a = ['spam','eggs',100,1234]
>>> a
['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]
>>> a[0]
'spam'
>>> a[3]
1234
>>> a[-2] Access to the elements in a reversed order
100
>>> a[1:2] Get a sub list
['eggs', 100]
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A LITTLE BIT MORE

ON THE STRING
The basic operations on the string are quite similar to that of list.
A similar way can be used to access individual characters, or
a sub-string.

>>> word = 'Help' + 'Me'

>>> word
'HelpMe'
>>> word[4]
'M'
>>> word[0:2] Get a sub string
'He'
>>> word[0:-2]
Python string/list features are actually
'Help'
very powerful!
>>> len(word)
We will come back to discuss them in
6
details at a upcoming lecture.
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PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

Testing prime numbers:
numbers = [17,59,83,129,187]
for m in numbers:
for n in range(m):
Surely you can do range(2,m)
if n<2:


instead of the continue statement.
continue
if m%n == 0:
print m,'is a multiple of',n
break
else:
print m,'is a prime number'
17 is a prime number
...
187 is a multiple of 11
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PUT IT ALL TOGETHER (II)

Or one can get the testing number with the raw_input function:
input = raw_input('Please enter a number: ')
m = int(input)
for n in range(m):
if n<2:
continue
if m%n == 0:
print m,'is a multiple of',n
break
else:
print m,'is a prime number'
Please enter a number: 127
input by keyboard
127 is a prime number
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INTERMISSION
Please try to find out:
Is 1237 a prime number?

How about 12347, 123457, and 1234567?

Print out all of the factors of 12345678.

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HANDS-ON SESSION
Up to now we have gone through:
The basic structure and syntax of python
Variables and operators
Branching, conditionals, and iterations
You should be able to write a meaningful program and carry out
some interesting calculations already!

Lets start our 2nd round of

hands-on session now!

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HANDS-ON SESSION
Practice 1:

Write a small program and print these two figures on your screen:
*
**
***
****
*****
******
*******
********
*********
**********

*
-***
---*****
-----*******
-------*********
----------

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HANDS-ON SESSION
Practice 2:

Print a multiplication table on your screen:

2x1
2x2
2x3
2x4
2x5
2x6
...
9x9

=
=
=
=
=
=

2
4
6
8
10
12

= 81

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HANDS-ON SESSION
Practice 3:

Find out all of the prime numbers which are smaller than 10000.
2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41
43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89
97 ... 9973

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HOMEWORK #2
Exercise 1:

2520 is the smallest number that can be divided by each of the

numbers from 1 to 10 without any remainder. What is the smallest
positive number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from
1 to 20?

Exercise 2:

Write a small program

that can print:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA
CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAB
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC
EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCD
FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDE
...
ZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY
35