Java Tutorial 13: Control Flow Statements- The while and do-while Statements

The while statement continually executes a block of statements while a particular condition is true. Its syntax can be expressed as:

while (expression) {

     statement(s)

}

The while statement evaluates expression, which must return a boolean value. If the expression evaluates to true, the while statement executes the statement(s) in the while block. The while statement continues testing the expression and executing its block until the expression evaluates to false. Using the while statement to print the values from 1 through 10 can be accomplished as in the following WhileDemo program:

class WhileDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args){

        int count = 1;

        while (count < 11) {

            System.out.println("Count is: "

                               + count);

            count++;

        }

    }

}

You can implement an infinite loop using the while statement as follows:

while (true){

    // your code goes here

}

The Java programming language also provides a do-while statement, which can be expressed as follows:

do {

     statement(s)

} while (expression);

The difference between do-while and while is that do-while evaluates its expression at the bottom of the loop instead of the top. Therefore, the statements within the do block are always executed at least once, as shown in the following DoWhileDemo program:

class DoWhileDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args){

        int count = 1;

        do {

            System.out.println("Count is: "

                               + count);

            count++;

        } while (count < 11);

    }

}