F# For Loops

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A for loop is a repetition control structure that allows you to efficiently write a loop that needs to execute a specific number of times. It allows you to execute an expression or group of expressions multiple times. There are two types of for loop.

  • for...to
  • for...in

for...to Expression

The for...to loop is used to iterate in a loop over a range of values of a loop variable. It is more like a traditional statement in an imperative programming language.

The basic syntax of the for...to loop is as follows.

for identifier = start [ to | downto ] finish do
    body-expression

The type of the identifier is inferred from the type of the start and finish expressions. Types for these expressions must be 32-bit integers.

The following examples show various uses of the for...to expression.

// Print from 1 to 5
for i = 1 to 5 do
    Console.WriteLine("Counter: {0}", i);

// Print in reverse from 5 to 1
for i = 5 downto 1 do
    Console.WriteLine("Counter: {0}", i);

for...in Expression

The for...in loop is used to iterate over a pattern's matches in an enumerable collection such as a range expression, sequence, list, array, or other constructs that supports enumeration.

  • The for...in expression can be compared to the for each statement in other .NET languages because it is used to loop over the values in an enumerable collection.
  • The for...in also supports pattern matching over the collection instead of just iteration over the whole collection.

The basic syntax of the for...in loop is as follows.

for pattern in enumerable-expression do
    body-expression

The following example shows how to use the for...in expression.

let list = [ 100; 500; 1000; 2000; 9000 ]
for i in list do
   Console.WriteLine(i)


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