How in the dickens does a for each loop work (syntax)?

[Ej King]

Hello~

Coming from a C++/VB background, I am now learning JAVA.

My professor wants us to use a for/each loop, and I cannot find the syntax in JAVA. I have an idea that it works like a "while" loop, but still would like to understand syntax. I also used a "for each" working with arrays of user entry in a VBA for Excel application.

I have tried my textbook and other books (incl. JAVA(R) for Dummies(R)), and also the oracle.com JAVA website, without success.

Does it use some kind of "filter" in the array? Like for each [element] that == "purple", do this loop?

Any direction would be appreciated.

Thanks!



EJ

[Bear Bibeault]

The for statement

[Ej King]

Bear Bibeault wrote:The for statement

Thank you, Bear.

My "for" loops are doing great. I don't know how a "for each" loop is different. Is it just an "enhanced for loop"?

[Bear Bibeault]

It's a way to loop through a collection without needing indexing.

Let's say we had an array of TeddyBear instances:

TeddyBear[] bears = ...some way to create the array ...

If we wanted to loop through them without needing indexes:

for (TeddyBear bear : bears) {
  // in here, "bear" is each instance in turn
}

It's about as close to for..each as Java gets.

It's really useful for other collections such as List, Map, and Set as well.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

You pronounce

for (TeddyBear bear : picnic)
{
   ...
}

…“For each TeddyBear bear in picnic”…, so I think the enhanced for is the equivalent of a for‑each, yes. A lot of Java™ people call enhanced for for‑each. I think you will find the ordinary for loop has just about the same syntax as C++

[Ej King]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Welcome to the Ranch

You pronounce

for (TeddyBear bear : picnic)
{
   ...
}

…“For each TeddyBear bear in picnic”…, so I think the enhanced for is the equivalent of a for‑each, yes. A lot of Java™ people call enhanced for for‑each. I think you will find the ordinary for loop has just about the same syntax as C++

Thank you!

I had been looking for the literal "for each".

So, this enhanced loop is quite handy for those days when you just don't know how many bears are going to show up at your picnic! It allows you to expand your array without worrying about the parameters in the for statement.

I'm curious now: Is there a limit to what size of array the "enhanced for" will handle? Memory limitation?

[Ej King]

Bear Bibeault wrote:
It's really useful for other collections such as List, Map, and Set as well.

Thanks. I'll play with those, as well.

[Henry Wong]

Ej King wrote:
So, this enhanced loop is quite handy for those days when you just don't know how many bears are going to show up at your picnic! It allows you to expand your array without worrying about the parameters in the for statement.

I'm curious now: Is there a limit to what size of array the "enhanced for" will handle? Memory limitation?

Keep in mind that the foreach loop is just syntactic sugar. For arrays, the compiler will simply convert it to a regular for loop -- with an unnamed variable to index the array. There is nothing that can be done with the foreach loop that can't be done with the regular for loop.

There is no specified limitation, so I guess the limits are the supported size of arrays for Java, and the amount of available memory on the machine.

Henry

[Campbell Ritchie]

Henry Wong wrote: . . . Keep in mind that the foreach loop is just syntactic sugar. For arrays, the compiler will simply convert it to a regular for loop -- with an unnamed variable to index the array. . . .

You do realise that means the loop variable is a read‑only variable?