for loops
The for
loop comes in two styles: the traditional for
loop and the enhanced for
loop. The enhanced for
loop is also known as the for-each
loop and is specifically designed to work with arrays and collections. We will start by examining the traditional for
loop.
Traditional for loop
This type of for
loop is extremely useful when you know how many iterations you wish to perform beforehand. Its syntax is detailed in Figure 5.8.
Figure 5.8 – The traditional for loop
The code block in the preceding figure is optional. We could simply control one statement, such as System.out.println("Looping");
, and omit {}
. The for
header is the section inside ()
. It consists of three parts, delimited by semi-colons:
- Initialization section: This is where you initialize your loop control variables. The variables declared here have the scope of the loop block only. Traditionally, the variables declared here are named
i
,j
,k
, and so forth...