More Conditionals and Loops - Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design - page 279

6.4 The for Statement

The while and the do statements are good to use when you don't
initially know how many times you want to execute the loop body.
The for statement is another repetition statement that is particularly
well suited for executing the body of a loop a specific number of
times that can be determined before the loop is executed.
The following code prints the numbers 1 through 5 using a for loop, just as
we did using other loop statements in previous examples:

KEY CONCEPT
A for statement is usually used
when a loop will be executed a set
number of times.

for ( int count=1; count <= 5; count++)
System.out.println (count);

The header of a for loop contains three parts separated by semicolons. Before
the loop begins, the first part of the header, called the initialization, is executed.

The second part of the header is the boolean condition, which is evaluated
before the loop body (like the while loop). If true, the body of the loop is
executed, followed by the execution of the third part of the header, which is
called the increment. Note that the initialization part is executed only once, but
the increment part is executed after each iteration of the loop. Figure 6.2 shows
this processing.

initialization

condition
evaluated

true

false

statement

increment

FIGURE 6.2 The logic of a for loop