Nested loops in C#

A nested loop has one loop inside of another. These are typically used for working with two dimensions such as printing stars in rows and columns as shown below. When a loop is nested inside another loop, the inner loop runs many times inside the outer loop. In each iteration of the outer loop, the inner loop will be re-started. The inner loop must finish all of its iterations before the outer loop can continue to its next iteration.

Example:

for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) {
	for(int col = 0; col < 5; col++) {
		Console.Write("*");
	}
    Console.WriteLine();
}

// This code prints a rectangle with 3 rows and 5 columns, filled with '*'

Iterating through multidimensional arrays

Nested loops are also helpful when we want to iterate through a multi dimensional array, for example:

int[][] arr = { new int[] {1, 2}, new int[] {3, 4}, new int[] {5, 6} };

for (int i = 0; i < arr.Length; i++) {
	for (int j = 0; j < arr[i].Length; j++) {
		Console.WriteLine(arr[i][j]);
	}
}

This outputs each sub-element in arr one at a time. Note that for the inner loop, we are checking the .Length of arr[i], since arr[i] is itself an array.

Breaking nested loops

In a nested loop, a break statement only stops the loop it is placed in. Therefore, if a break is placed in the inner loop, the outer loop still continues. For example:

int[][] arr = { new int[] {1, 2}, new int[] {3, 4}, new int[] {5, 6} };

for (int i = 0; i < arr.Length; i++) {
	for (int j = 0; j < arr[i].Length; j++) {
		if(arr[i][j] == 3) {
			break;
		}
		Console.WriteLine(arr[i][j]);
	}
}

// prints the numbers 1, 2, 5 and 6 on different lines

When i is 1 and j is 0, we execute the break. This means we stop the inner loop and go back to the outer loop to continue from the next iteration, which is i = 2. And as you can see, we print all the elements of row 2.

However, if the break is placed in the outer loop, all of the looping stops. For example:

int[][] arr = { new int[] {1, 2}, new int[] {3, 4}, new int[] {5, 6} };

for (int i = 0; i < arr.Length; i++) {
	if(arr[i][0] == 3) {
		break;
	}
	for (int j = 0; j < arr[i].Length; j++) {
		Console.WriteLine(arr[i][j]);
	}
}
// prints the numbers 1 and 2 on different lines

Assignment
Follow the Coding Tutorial and let's write some nested loops.

Hint
Look at the examples above if you get stuck.