In
computer science a
for-loop (or simply
for loop) is a
programming language control statement for specifying
iteration, which allows code to be
executed repeatedly. The syntax of a for-loop is based on the heritage of the language and the prior programming languages it borrowed from, so programming languages that are descendants of or offshoots of a language that originally provided an iterator will often use the same keyword to name an iterator, e.g., descendants of
ALGOL use "for", while descendants of
Fortran use "do." There are other possibilities, for example
COBOL which uses "PERFORM VARYING".