HOLIDAY SALE! Save 50% on Membership with code HOLIDAY50. Save 15% on Mentorship with code HOLIDAY15.

7) Conditionals & Loops Lesson

What is the For-Each Loop?

3 min to complete · By Ryan Desmond

Another type of for loop in Java is the enhanced for loop or for-each loop. This page is only a quick introduction since you will dive deeper into the subject after you've learned about Java Collections.

How Does the For-Each Loop Work?

The for-each loop is used to iterate over a collection of variables such as arrays. The form of the for-each loop is as follows.

for(type iteration-variable : collection){
  // executable code 
}

For-Each Loop Java Example

To iterate an array collection, the following loop would print out each variable inside of collection.

class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args){
    String[] collection = {"This", "is", "a", "collection"};
    for(String item : collection){
      System.out.println("The item is: " + item);
    }
  }
}

Now that you're aware of the existence of for-each loops, there are still several missing parts to your introduction to conditional flow control before you dive into collections.

Summary: Java For-Each Loop

The for-each loop in Java is similar to the for loop, except its syntax is specifically set to iterate over a collection.

Syntax

Here's the syntax for the for-each loop, where you can substitute the variables starting with your_ with your values.

for(your_variable_type your_item_name : your_collection){
  // executable code 
}