Access Database Design and Programming, Second Edition

The For Each Loop

The For Each loop is a variation on the For loop that was designed to iterate through a collection of objects (as well as through elements in an array), and is generally much more efficient than using the traditional For loop. The general syntax is:

For Each ObjectVar In CollectionName

   ' block of code goes here . . .

Next ObjectVar

where ObjectVar is a variable of the same object type as the objects within the collection. The code block will execute once for each object in the collection.

The following version of PrintFields uses a For Each loop. It is more elegant than the previous version (and more efficient as well):

Sub PrintFields2()

Dim fld As Field
Dim rs As Recordset
Set rs = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset("Objects")

For Each fld In rs.Fields
   Debug.Print fld.Name
Next

rs.Close
 
End Sub

Thus, when iterating through a collection of objects, we have two choices:

For Each object in Collection
   ' code block here
Next object

or:

For i = 1 to Collection.Count
   ' code block here
Next i

It is important to keep in mind that the For Each loop can be much faster than the For loop when dealing with collections of objects.