A while loop in R programming is a control flow statement that repeatedly executes a block of code as long as a specified condition is true. The basic syntax of a while loop in R is as follows: 

while (condition) {
  # code to be executed
}

The condition in the while loop must evaluate to either TRUE or FALSE. If the condition is TRUE, the code inside the loop will be executed, and the condition will be re-evaluated at the end of the loop. This process will continue until the condition is FALSE, at which point the loop will terminate.

For example, the following while loop in R counts from 1 to 10: 

i <- 1
while (i <= 10) {
  print(i)
  i <- i + 1
}

In this example, the condition i <= 10 is initially true, so the code inside the loop is executed, which prints the value of i and increments it by 1. This process repeats until i reaches 11, at which point the condition is false and the loop terminates.

It is important to ensure that the condition in a while loop will eventually become false, otherwise the loop will continue indefinitely and cause an infinite loop.