Java Iterator

Iterator in Java

What Is It? An Iterator is an interface in Java that provides a way to access elements in a collection one by one. It is a universal cursor, allowing you to traverse through collections like lists, sets, and more, in a sequential manner without needing to understand the underlying structure of the collection.

How It Works Iterator comes with methods that let you perform three main operations: check for more elements, retrieve the next element, and remove elements during iteration. It’s commonly used with Java’s Collection Framework.

The basic syntax for using an Iterator in Java is as follows:

Output:

Explanation of this code:

1. First, obtain an Iterator object from the collection you want to iterate through.
2. Use a while loop or a for loop to traverse through the elements using the Iterator’s methods. The common methods used are hasNext() to check if there is another element and next() to retrieve the next element.
3. In this example, we create an ArrayList of strings called fruits and add some elements to it. We then obtain an Iterator from the ArrayList using the iterator() We use a while loop with hasNext() and next() methods to traverse through the elements and print them one by one.