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iOS Swift Collections and Control Flow Control Flow With Loops Working With Loops

Joel Crouse
Joel Crouse
4,727 Points

I'm not sure how to solve this.

I'm not sure how to solve this code challenge. I'm supposed to add all the numbers in numbers array and assign the sum to sum variable.

loops.swift
let numbers = [2,8,1,16,4,3,9]
var sum = 0
var counter = 0

// Enter your code below
while counter <= numbers.count {
  counter += 1
  sum = sum + numbers[counter]
}

1 Answer

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

Your syntax here is correct and your code will compile just fine, but you have a couple of logical errors here. I think they'll become most obvious if we step through your code.

Your first problem is an ever-common "off by 1" bug. At the first iteration of the loop, counter will be 0, which is less than or equal to numbers.count, so the code in the loop will run. The first thing that happens is that 1 is added to counter, so counter is now equal to 1. Next, you use the counter variable to index into the numbers array and add the value at the index of the current value of counter to sum. Remember that array indexes start at 0, but the first time this line runs, counter is 1, so it actually gets the second item in the numbers array. This will continue for the entire loop, and ultimately the first value will be skipped entirely. What you really wanna do here is increment your counter after you've done all the work in your loop.

Once you've fixed that issue, you still have one more problem, but it won't present itself until the very last iteration of the loop. On the last iteration, counter is equal to numbers.count, which is 7 in this case. This passes the check in your condition, so the code in the loop runs. When it gets to the point where you index into the numbers array, it'll try to get the value at index 7, and your program will crash. This is also because array indexing starts at 0. Because of that, the highest index in an array will always be equal to array.count - 1. Thus, the index 7 doesn't exist in this array. Thus, the code challenge asks you to check if count is less than numbers.count, and not less than or equal to.

Once you fix those 2 issues, your code should pass just fine!

Joel Crouse
Joel Crouse
4,727 Points

Thanks! I passed the code challenge.