for statement is also used to make looping in PHP programming. Its structure is bit more complex than the other loop statements like “while”.

Its structure will look like

for ( expression 1 ; expression 2 ; expression 3 )
{
// Operation statements
}

In “for statement”

• expression 1 will evaluate before the beginning of loop
• expression 2 will evaluate before the beginning of each iteration
• expression 3 will evaluate at the end of each iteration

See the sample program with for statement in PHP

<?php
for ($i=0 ; $i < 10 ; $i++)
{
echo $i." ";
}
?>

Its output will be
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

In this example the first expression ($i=0) will execute before the “for loop”.
Then it will execute the second expression ($i < 10) before each iteration.
At the end of each iteration third expression ($i++) will execute.

The expressions with “for statement” can be empty.
See this PHP program will give the same output like the previous example

<?php
$i=0;
for ( ; $i < 10 ; $i++)
{
echo $i." ";
}
?>

Its output will be :
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

And we can see that the first expression is empty in “for statement”.