DAY 44 OF 90 · Know when to stop

Collatz steps

Medium90 Days of Looping

Inputs

n is a whole number from 1 to 500.

Your tasks

Create a number steps that starts at 0 and a number current set to n.
Use a while loop that runs while current is not 1. If current is even, halve it. If it is odd, replace it with 3 * current + 1. Add 1 to steps each round.
Complete collatzSteps so it returns steps. Return it, do not print it.

Example

With n = 6, collatzSteps returns 8.

Rules

If n is already 1, return 0.

Test data

TEST DATA 1: n is 6

TEST DATA 2: n is 1

Practice focus

While loops and early exits, for when you don't know how many rounds you need. Binary search, the Euclidean algorithm and graph search are all while loops with a clear stopping rule.

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