Question

I often see code like:

Iterator i = list.iterator(); while(i.hasNext()) {     ... } 

but I write that (when Java 1.5 isn’t available or for each can’t be used) as:

for(Iterator i = list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {     ... } 

because

• It is shorter
• It keeps i in a smaller scope
• It reduces the chance of confusion. (Is i used outside the while? Where is i declared?)

I think code should be as simple to understand as possible so that I only have to make complex code to do complex things. What do you think? Which is better?

From: http://jamesjava.blogspot.com/2006/04/iterating.html

Answer 1

I prefer the for loop because it also sets the scope of the iterator to just the for loop.