Calling remove in foreach loop in Java [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Iterating through a Collection, avoiding ConcurrentModificationException when removing objects in a loop 23 answers

In Java, is it legal to call remove on a collection when iterating through the collection using a foreach loop? For instance:

List<String> names = ....
for (String name : names) {
   // Do something
   names.remove(name).
}

As an addendum, is it legal to remove items that have not been iterated over yet? For instance,

//Assume that the names list as duplicate entries
List<String> names = ....
for (String name : names) {
    // Do something
    while (names.remove(name));
}

Answer 1

I didn't know about iterators, however here's what I was doing until today to remove elements from a list inside a loop:

List<String> names = .... 
for (i=names.size()-1;i>=0;i--) {    
    // Do something    
    names.remove(i);
} 

This is always working, and could be used in other languages or structs not supporting iterators.

Answer 2

Make sure this is not code smell. Is it possible to reverse the logic and be 'inclusive' rather than 'exclusive'?

List<String> names = ....
List<String> reducedNames = ....
for (String name : names) {
   // Do something
   if (conditionToIncludeMet)
       reducedNames.add(name);
}
return reducedNames;

The situation that led me to this page involved old code that looped through a List using indecies to remove elements from the List. I wanted to refactor it to use the foreach style.

It looped through an entire list of elements to verify which ones the user had permission to access, and removed the ones that didn't have permission from the list.

List<Service> services = ...
for (int i=0; i<services.size(); i++) {
    if (!isServicePermitted(user, services.get(i)))
         services.remove(i);
}

To reverse this and not use the remove:

List<Service> services = ...
List<Service> permittedServices = ...
for (Service service:services) {
    if (isServicePermitted(user, service))
         permittedServices.add(service);
}
return permittedServices;

When would "remove" be preferred? One consideration is if gien a large list or expensive "add", combined with only a few removed compared to the list size. It might be more efficient to only do a few removes rather than a great many adds. But in my case the situation did not merit such an optimization.

Answer 3

for (String name : new ArrayList<String>(names)) {
    // Do something
    names.remove(nameToRemove);
}

You clone the list names and iterate through the clone while you remove from the original list. A bit cleaner than the top answer.

Answer 4

To safely remove from a collection while iterating over it you should use an Iterator.

For example:

List<String> names = ....
Iterator<String> i = names.iterator();
while (i.hasNext()) {
   String s = i.next(); // must be called before you can call i.remove()
   // Do something
   i.remove();
}

From the Java Documentation :

The iterators returned by this class's iterator and listIterator methods are fail-fast: if the list is structurally modified at any time after the iterator is created, in any way except through the iterator's own remove or add methods, the iterator will throw a ConcurrentModificationException. Thus, in the face of concurrent modification, the iterator fails quickly and cleanly, rather than risking arbitrary, non-deterministic behavior at an undetermined time in the future.

Perhaps what is unclear to many novices is the fact that iterating over a list using the for/foreach constructs implicitly creates an iterator which is necessarily inaccessible. This info can be found here

Answer 5

Those saying that you can't safely remove an item from a collection except through the Iterator aren't quite correct, you can do it safely using one of the concurrent collections such as ConcurrentHashMap.