What is the difference between an iteration and a loop?

Question

I am doing Cs50 Harvard University online and I'm on week 3 but while watching the video I noticed that I iterations and loops seem the same, as they repeat things over and over. But there must be a difference or else they wouldn't have two names for the same thing. No matter how many times I re-watch the video I can't find a difference. Please help me understand.

Answer 1

"Loop" refers to language constructs that are used to repeatedly execute some code. (for loops, while loops, etc.)

"Loop" can also refer to code being executed repeatedly. (e.g. "It's stuck in a loop.")

Iterating is the process of doing something repeatedly. (e.g. "This loop iterates over the elements of the array.")

An iteration is a single pass of a loop. (e.g. "In the first iteration of that for loop, i will be 0.")