Java 6 Illuminated: An Active Learning Approach, 2nd Edition

344 CHAPTER 6 Flow of Control,Part 2: Looping

Figure 6.27

The Backwards Class with

an Empty Sentence

the for loop with an empty sentence. In other words, when the prompt

appears to enter a sentence, we simply press the OK button. If you try this,

you will find that the application still works, as Figure 6.27 shows.

The program works correctly with an empty sentence because the for loop

initialization statement is

int i = original.length( ) – 1;

Because the length of an empty String is 0, this statement sets i to –1. The

loop condition (

i >= 0) is false, so the loop body is never executed. The flow

of control skips to the statement following the loop,