Repeating Code with for Loops

There are three types of loops that are used in Java:

1. for loops
2. while loops
3. do-while loops

The most structured Java loop is the for loop, which repeats a section of code a fixed number of times.

for Statement

The for statement is used when the number of times the loop needs to be executed is known. There are two variations of the for loop. The first one is discussed in this section and is the traditional form. The for-each statement is the second form and was introduced in Java 5. It is discussed in the at the bottom of this page. The for statement consists of the following three parts:

1. Initial operation
2. Terminal condition
3. End loop operation

Following is the syntax of the for loop:

for (initialization-expression; boolean-condition; update-expression)
  Statement

The body of a for loop is typically a block statement. The initial operation takes place prior to the first iteration of the loop and is executed only once. The end loop operations take place at the end of each execution of the loop. The terminal condition determines when the loop will terminate and is a logical expression. It is executed at the beginning of each repetition of the loop. Thus, the body of the for loop may be executed zero times if the first time the terminal condition is evaluated, it evaluates to false.
A variable is normally used as part of the initial operation, terminal condition, and end loop operation. The variable is either declared as part of the loop or is declared external to the loop. The following code snippet is an example of declaring a variable, i, as part of the loop. An example of using an external variable is covered in the The for statement and scope section:

for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
System.out.print(i + " ");
}
System.out.println();

In this example we used a single statement in the body of the loop. The variable i was assigned an initial value of 1 and is incremented by 1 each time the loop executes. The loop executed 10 times and produced 1 line of output. The statement, i++, is a more concise way of saying i = i + 1. The output should be the following:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The for loop repeats the Statement a number of times as determined by the

1. initialization-expression,
2. boolean-condition,
3. update-expression:

1. The initialization-expression initializes a loop control variable.
2. The boolean-condition compares the loop control variable to some limit value.
3. The update-expression updates the loop control variable before the next iteration of the loop.

Following is an example that uses a for loop to count up from one to ten:

for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
  System.out.println(i);

In this example, the initializationExpression is int i = 1, which is evaluated initially before the loop begins.
The boolean-condition, i <= 10, is a Boolean test performed before each iteration of the loop.
If the Boolean test result is true the Statement is executed, which in this case prints the current value of i.
The update-expression (i++) is evaluated after each iteration.
This statement increments i after each iteration and establishes the count.
The loop continues to iterate and print numbers as i counts up to 10.
Once i reaches 11 the loop condition test fails (i <= 10), and the loop exits.

Click the Quiz link below to test your knowledge of conditionals and loops.
Conditional Loops - Quiz

In this exercise, you will develop an application that calculates grade-point averages.
for Loop - Exercise