In this code what is the idea of max_index = len(words) - 1 ? Could someone explain this code step by step please?

Question

words = ["hello", "world", "spam", "eggs"]
counter = 0
max_index = len(words) - 1

while counter <= max_index:
word = words[counter]
print(word + "!")
counter = counter + 1

Answer 1

words has 4 items, they have the index 0, 1, 2 and 3.

So although you have 4 items, the last item is 3 (len - 1) instead of 4.

counter starts at zero and is increased by 1 in every run of the loop, but only as long as it's not higher than 3 (max_index).

So basically this walks one time through that list.

Each word is stored in the variable word and printed out with a ! at the end.

Answer 2

Thank you very much! @HonFu !