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

3.8. Summary

In this chapter you have learned about all of the essential mechanisms for making decisions in Java. You have also learned all of the looping facilities that you have available when programming in Java. The essential points I have covered are:

• You can use relational operators to compare values, and such comparisons result in values of either true or false.

• You can combine basic comparisons and logical variables in more complex logical expressions by using logical operators.

• The if statement is a basic decision-making tool in Java. It enables you to choose to execute a block of statements if a given logical expression has the value true. You can optionally execute another block of statements if the logical expression is false by using the else keyword.

• You can use the conditional operator to choose between two expressions depending on the value of a logical expression.

• You can use the switch statement to choose from a fixed number of alternatives.

• The variables in a method come into existence at the point at which you declare them and cease to exist after the end of the block that immediately encloses their declaration. The program extent where the variable is accessible is the scope of the variable.

• You have four ways of repeating a block of statements: a numerical for loop, a collection-based for loop, a while loop, or a do while loop.

• The continue statement enables you to skip to the next iteration in the loop containing the continue statement.

• The labeled continue statement ...