What does the colon (:) operator do?

Asked 2010-03-08T06:09:44.837

105

Apparently a colon is used in multiple ways in Java. Would anyone mind explaining what it does?

For instance here:

String cardString = "";
for (PlayingCard c : this.list)  // <--
{
    cardString += c + "\n";
}

How would you write this for-each loop a different way so as to not incorporate the :?

java for-loop foreach operators

Edit Report

1 Answer

In your specific case,

String cardString = "";
for (PlayingCard c : this.list)  // <--
{
    cardString = cardString + c + "\n";
}

this.list is a collection (list, set, or array), and that code assigns c to each element of the collection.

So, if this.list were a collection {"2S", "3H", "4S"} then the cardString on the end would be this string:

2S
3H
4S

answered 2010-03-08T06:24:55.083