The simplest for statement looks like this:

The suite is an indented block of statements. Any statement is allowed in the block, including indented for statements.

The variable is a variable name. The suite will be executed iteratively with the variable set to each of the values in the given sequence . Typically, the suite will use the variable , expecting it to have a distinct value on each pass.

There are a number of ways of creating the necessary sequence of values. The most common is to use the range function to generate a suitable list. We can also create the list manually, using a sequence display; we'll show some examples here. We'll return to the details of sequences in Chapter 11, Sequences: Strings, Tuples and Lists .

The range function has 3 forms:

A sequence display looks like this: [ expression , ... ] . It's a list of expressions, usually simply numbers, separated by commas. The square brackets are essential for marking a sequence.

This first example creates a sequence of 6 values from 0 to just before 6. The for statement iterates through the sequence, assigning each value to the local variable i. The print statement has an expression that adds one to i and prints the resulting value. Note that the suite of statements in the body of the for statement is simply a print statement, so we can combine it all on one line.

for i in range(6): print i+1

The second example creates a sequence of 6 values from 1 to just before 7. The for statement iterates through the sequence, assigning each value to the local variable j. The print statement prints the value.

for j in range(1,7):
 print j

This example creates a sequence of 36/2=18 values from 1 to just before 36 stepping by 2. This will be a list of odd values from 1 to 35. The for statement iterates through the sequence, assigning each value to the local variable o. The print statement prints all 18 values.

for o in range(1,36,2): 
 print o

This example uses an explicit sequence of values. These are all of the red numbers on a standard roulette wheel. It then iterates through the sequence, assigning each value to the local variable r. The print statement prints all 18 values followed by the word "red".

for r in [1,3,5,7,9,12,14,16,18,19,21,23,25,27,30,32,34,36]: 
 print r, "red"

Here's a more complex example, showing nested for statements. This enumerates all the 36 outcomes of rolling two dice. The outer for statement creates a sequence of 6 values, and iterates through the sequence, assigning each value to the local variable d1. For each value of d1, the inner loop creates a sequence of 6 values, and iterates through that sequence, assigning each value to d2. The print statement will be executed 36 times.

for d1 in range(6):
 for d2 in range(6):
 print d1+1,d2+1,'=',d1+d2+2

Here's the example alluded to earlier, which does 100 simulations of rolling two dice. The for statement creates the sequence of 100 values, assigns each value to the local variable i; note that the suite of statements never actually uses the value of i. The value of i marks the state changes until the loop is complete, but isn't used for anything else.

import random
for i in range(100):
 d1= random.randrange(6)+1
 d2= random.randrange(6)+1
 print d1+d2

There are a number of more advanced forms of the for statement, which we'll cover in the section on sequences in Chapter 11, Sequences: Strings, Tuples and Lists .