Ivor Horton's Beginning Java™ 2, JDK™ 5th Edition

3.6. Loops

A loop allows you to execute a statement or block of statements repeatedly. The need to repeat a block of code arises in almost every program. If you did the first exercise at the end of the last chapter, based on what you had learned up to that point, you would have come up with a program along the lines of the following:

public class TryExample1_1 {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    byte value = 1;
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now "+value);
  }
}

The same pair of statements has been entered eight times. This is a rather tedious way of doing things. If the program for the company payroll had to include separate statements to do the calculation for each employee, it would never get written. A loop removes this sort of difficulty. You could write the method main() to do the same as the code above as follows:

public static void main(String[] args) {
  byte value = 1;
  for (int i=0; i<8 ; i++) {
    value *= 2;
    System.out.println("Value is now " + value);
  }
}

This uses one particular kind of loop—called a for loop. The for loop statement on the third line causes the statements in the ...