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Control Statements > Iteration statements (Loops) >
Siva Nookala - 09 Feb 2019
The for statement in Java provides a compact way to iterate over a range of values. We often call it as the "for loop" because of the way in which it repeatedly loops as long as a particular condition is satisfied.

The syntax of for loop in Java is:

for(initialization; condition; iteration)
{
    // body
}
As shown above, the initialization portion initializes the loop control variable. The condition is a boolean expression that tests the loop control variable. The iteration is used to increment or decrement the loop control variable.
All three initialization, condition and iteration are optional. i.e. we can have for loop without initialization section or condition section or iteration section.
  • intialization section is called only once before the for for starts. i.e. No matter how many iterations are there, it is executed only once at the beginning of the for loop. That is why any declarations and intializations, which we do only once goes in this section.
  • condition is checked every time before starting the iteration, and only if it is true the body is executed, else the for loop is terminated.
  • iteration is called at the end of the body after every iteration. So if there are 5 iterations, the iteration section is executed 5 times.
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Here is a short program that shows how for loop works:
For Loop example
class ForExample
{
    public static void main(String arg[])
    {
        for(int x = 0; x < 5; x++)
        {
            System.out.println("x = " + x);
        }
        System.out.println("After for loop");
    
    }
}
OUTPUT

x = 0
x = 1
x = 2
x = 3
x = 4
After for loop

DESCRIPTION

In this example x is the loop control variable. It is initialized to zero in the initialization portion of the for. The condition x < 5 is mentioned in condition portion. The iteration x++ which is same as x = x + 1 is mentioned in increment portion.
First x is initialized to zero and then it checks for the condition 0 < 3 which is true so, it prints x = 0, then it increments the x value by one. Now x is 1 and the condition 1 < 5 is still true, so it prints x = 1 and increments x to 2. The condition 2 < 5 is again checked and since it is true, it prints x = 2.
This continues until x becomes 5. Then the condition 5 < 5 is false, so it terminates the loop and prints After for loop.

THINGS TO TRY
  • Place the code shown below in the above program and check the output
    for (int x = 5; x > 0; x--) {
        System.out.println("x = " + x);
    }
    System.out.println("After for loop");
    The output for the above code should be :
    x = 5
    x = 4
    x = 3
    x = 2
    x = 1
    After for loop

    The above shown is a decrement for loop. Initially the i value is assigned to 5 and on every iteration it is decremented by 1
  • Try to print even numbers between 0 to 10 using a for loop.
  • Try to print odd numbers between 11 to 20 using a for loop.

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