Repeating With for Loops

Imagine you have a list of names and want to greet each one. You could write a print for every name by hand — but that's tedious and breaks the moment the list changes. Instead, we use a for loop to do something for each item automatically.

Looping over a list

names = ["Sam", "Ada", "Leo"]
for person in names:
    print("Hello,", person)

Here's what happens, step by step:

• Python takes the first item from names and puts it in person.
• It runs the indented block (the print).
• Then it grabs the next item, and repeats — until the list runs out.

So the loop runs three times, once per name. The word person is just a name we chose for "the current item" — you could call it anything.

Notice the familiar pattern from if: a colon at the end of the for line, and the repeated code indented beneath it.

Counting with range

When you want to repeat a fixed number of times, use range:

for number in range(5):
    print(number)

That prints 0 1 2 3 4 — five numbers, starting at 0. Again, computers love counting from 0. range(5) gives five values: 0 up to (but not including) 5.

Your turn

Add a name to the list and run it — notice you didn't have to add any new print lines. That's the power of loops.