the loop variable there is one part of for loop that is little trickyand that is the loop variable in the example belowthe loop variable is the variable the output of this program will be the numbers each printed on its own line for in range( )print(iwhen the loop first startspython sets the variable to each time we loop back uppython increases the value of by the program loops timeseach time increasing the value of by until we have looped times at this point the value of is you may be wondering why starts with instead of wellthere doesn' seem to be any really good reason why other than that starting at was useful in the early days of computing and it has stuck with us in fact most things in computer programming start at instead of this does take some getting used to since the loop variableigets increased by each time through the loopit can be used to keep track of where we are in the looping process consider the example belowfor in range( )print( + '-hello ' -hello -hello -hello names there' nothing too special about the name for our variable the programs below will have the exact same result for in range( )print(ifor wacky_name in range( )print(wacky_nameit' convention in programming to use the letters ijand for loop variablesunless there' good reason to give the variable more descriptive name the range function the value we put in the range function determines how many times we will loop the way range works is it produces list of numbers from zero to the value minus one for instancerange( produces five values and