Name of the Counter Variable

You can use any variable for the counter variable in a FOR loop. But usually you should dedicate one variable to the task of counting, and use other variables for what ever other purposes you have. The variable that is dedicated to keeping the count is sometimes called a loop control variable. It is an ordinary numeric variable. There is nothing special about it except in how it is used.

Here is a program that counts from 5 to 10. The loop control variable is named I.

' Counting Loop---count from 5 to 10
'
FOR I = 5 TO 10
  PRINT I;        ' notice the semicolon, but don't worry about it just now
NEXT I        
END