What structure is used to repeatedly perform actions for a specified number of times in programming?

The for loop is specifically designed for situations where you need to execute a block of code a predetermined number of times. It allows you to initialize a counter, specify a condition to continue looping, and update the counter after each iteration, all in one concise statement. This structure is particularly useful for iterating over arrays or collections, as it provides a clear mechanism for stating the number of iterations based on the size of the collection.

In contrast, while loops continue to execute as long as a specified condition evaluates to true and do not inherently know how many times they will run. A do while loop also operates under a condition but guarantees at least one execution of the code block, which may not be suitable for all scenarios involving a known count. The switch statement serves a completely different purpose by enabling multi-way branching based on the value of a variable rather than executing code repeatedly.