While loop in Ruby - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using a While Loop in Ruby

📖 Scenario: You are helping a small shop count how many items they have in stock. The shop owner wants to count items one by one until they reach the total number of items.

🎯 Goal: Build a Ruby program that uses a while loop to count items from 1 up to a total number and then shows the final count.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable called total_items with the value 10

Create a variable called count starting at 1

Use a while loop with the condition count <= total_items

Inside the loop, print the current count value

Increase count by 1 inside the loop

After the loop, print "Counting finished: 10 items counted."

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Counting items one by one is common in shops, inventories, or any place where you need to process things step by step.

💼 Career

Understanding loops is essential for automating repetitive tasks in programming jobs, such as data processing or user input handling.

1

Set up the total number of items

Create a variable called total_items and set it to 10.

Ruby

# Create a variable called total_items and set it to 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use = to assign the number 10 to total_items.

2

Create a counter variable

Create a variable called count and set it to 1.

Ruby

total_items = 10
# Create a variable called count and set it to 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start counting from 1 by assigning 1 to count.

3

Write the while loop to count items

Write a while loop with the condition count <= total_items. Inside the loop, print the current count value, then increase count by 1.

Ruby

total_items = 10
count = 1
# Write a while loop with condition count <= total_items
# Inside the loop, print count and then increase count by 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use while count <= total_items to start the loop. Use puts count to print, and count += 1 to add one to count.

4

Print the final message after counting

After the while loop, print the message "Counting finished: 10 items counted.".

Ruby

total_items = 10
count = 1
while count <= total_items
  puts count
  count += 1
end
# Print the final message after the loop
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use puts to print the final message after the loop ends.