Different Ways to Traverse/Iterate/Loop a List In Java

In this post, i will show 4 basic ways to traverse/iterate/loop a list in java. They are

1. Using basic for loop.
2. Using enhanced for loop.
3. Using an Iterator.
4. Using an while loop.

consider you have a list of String objects. for example

List<String> aList = Arrays.asList("abc","cde","def","efg","fgh","ghi","hij","ijk","jkl");

1. Using Basic for Loop:

As Lists such as ArrayList, LinkedList are ordered in nature, you can use basic for loop, to iterate these type of collections.

The code is below.

for(int i = 0, j = aList.size(); i < j; i++) {
    System.out.print(aList.get(i)+" ");
}

2.Using Enhanced for Loop:

The enhanced for loop, iterates List and Set type of collections only.

The code in this approach is

for(String item: aList) {
 System.out.print(item+" ");
}

3.Using an Iterator with while Loop:

Iterator aItr = aList.iterator();
  
  while(aItr.hasNext()) {
   System.out.print(aItr.next()+" ");
  }

4.Using a basic while Loop:

what ever you can write using for loop, you can convert it into while loop. The below code snippet is similar to way 1.

int i = 0, j = aList.size();
  while(i < j) {
   System.out.print(aList.get(i)+" ");
   i++;
  }

The complete code with all the approaches is

package com.speakingcs.collections;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

public class TraverseList {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  
  TraverseList tl = new TraverseList();
  tl.traverse();
 }

 private void traverse() {
  
  List aList = Arrays.asList("abc","cde","def","efg","ghi","hij","jkl");
  
  // using basic for looop
  
  System.out.println("***Using basic for loop***");
  for(int i = 0, j = aList.size(); i < j; i++) {
   System.out.print(aList.get(i)+" ");
  }
  
  // using enhanced for loop
  System.out.println("\n***Using enhanced for loop***");
  
  for(String item: aList) {
   System.out.print(item+" ");
  }
  
  // using iterator with while loop
  System.out.println("\n***using iterator***");
  
  Iterator aItr = aList.iterator();
  
  while(aItr.hasNext()) {
   System.out.print(aItr.next()+" ");
  }
  
  // using basic while loop
  
  System.out.println("\n***using basic while loop***");
  
  int i = 0, j = aList.size();
  while(i < j) {
   System.out.print(aList.get(i)+" ");
   i++;
  }
 }

}

The Output is