Question

I’m doing an assignment that involves a board. The base code is given for us to modify, but I don’t understand what the : in the parameters of the for() means. Does it go through all the board (the ArrayList)?

private ArrayList<MovingElement> moveElems = new ArrayList<MovingElement>();

for (MovingElement mElement : moveElems) {
    mElement.step();
}

Answer 1

This is a special form of the for loop used to iterate over arrays and any Iterable, which includes any Collection.

This is referred to as a for-each loop, as in: for each element of a list.

Read: for (MovingElement mElement : moveElems) as _for each MovingElement in the collection moveElems_.

See: The For-Each Loop.