Repetition statement—repeats an action while a condition remains true.

Pseudocode

While there are more items on my shopping list
  Purchase next item and cross it off my list

The repetition statement’s body may be a single statement or a block.

Eventually, the condition will become false. At this point, the repetition terminates, and the first statement after the repetition statement executes.

Example of Java’s while repetition statement: find the first power of 3 larger than 100.
Assume int variable product is initialized to 3.

  while ( product <= 100 )
     product = 3 * product;

Each iteration multiplies product by 3, so product takes on the values 9, 27, 81 and 243 successively.

When variable product becomes 243, the while-statement condition—product <= 100—becomes false.  Repetition terminates. The final value of product is 243.

Program execution continues with the next statement after the while statement.