What does ":" mean in this Java statement?

Question

for (Season time : Season.values() )
system.out.println (time+ "\t" + time.getSpan());

I see an example for enumeration using :. What does this mean?

Answer 1

This is the Java syntax for a foreach loop.

The loop will iterate over all the items in the collection of objects returned by Season.values() one at a time, putting each item in turn into the time variable before executing the loop body. See this closely related question for more details on how the foreach loop works.

Answer 2

It is just a token to separate the iterating variable on the left from the array on the right in the new for-each loop

Answer 3

It's java's version of foreach.

It's a shorthand version of

for (int i = 0; i < Season.values().size(); i++) {
    Season time = Season.values().get(i);
    System.out.println(time + "\t" + time.getSpan());
}

(exact details depend on what it is that Season.values() is returning, but you get the idea)

As Michael points out, while the above example is more intuitive, foreach is actually the equivalent of this:

Iterator<Season> seasons = Season.iterator();
while (seasons.hasNext()) {
    Season time = seasons.next();
    System.out.println(time + "\t" + time.getSpan());
}