Last iteration of enhanced for loop in java

Question

Is there a way to determine if the loop is iterating for the last time. My code looks something like this:

int[] array = {1, 2, 3...};
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();

for(int i : array)
{
    builder.append("" + i);
    if(!lastiteration)
        builder.append(",");
}

Now the thing is I don't want to append the comma in the last iteration. Now is there a way to determine if it is the last iteration or am I stuck with the for loop or using an external counter to keep track.

Answer 1

Another alternative is to append the comma before you append i, just not on the first iteration. (Please don't use "" + i, by the way - you don't really want concatenation here, and StringBuilder has a perfectly good append(int) overload.)

int[] array = {1, 2, 3...};
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();

for (int i : array) {
    if (builder.length() != 0) {
        builder.append(",");
    }
    builder.append(i);
}

The nice thing about this is that it will work with any Iterable - you can't always index things. (The "add the comma and then remove it at the end" is a nice suggestion when you're really using StringBuilder - but it doesn't work for things like writing to streams. It's possibly the best approach for this exact problem though.)

Answer 2

Here's a SSCCE benchmark I ran (related to what I had to implement) with these results:

elapsed time with checks at every iteration: 12055(ms)
elapsed time with deletion at the end: 11977(ms)

On my example at least, skipping the check at every iteration isn't noticeably faster especially for sane volumes of data, but it is faster.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;


public class TestCommas {

  public static String GetUrlsIn(int aProjectID, List<String> aUrls, boolean aPreferChecks)
  {

    if (aPreferChecks) {

      StringBuffer sql = new StringBuffer("select * from mytable_" + aProjectID + " WHERE hash IN ");

      StringBuffer inHashes = new StringBuffer("(");
      StringBuffer inURLs = new StringBuffer("(");

      if (aUrls.size() > 0)
      {

      for (String url : aUrls)
      {

        if (inHashes.length() > 0) {
        inHashes.append(",");
        inURLs.append(",");
        }

        inHashes.append(url.hashCode());

        inURLs.append("\"").append(url.replace("\"", "\\\"")).append("\"");//.append(",");

      }

      }

      inHashes.append(")");
      inURLs.append(")");

      return sql.append(inHashes).append(" AND url IN ").append(inURLs).toString();
    }

    else {

      StringBuffer sql = new StringBuffer("select * from mytable" + aProjectID + " WHERE hash IN ");

      StringBuffer inHashes = new StringBuffer("(");
      StringBuffer inURLs = new StringBuffer("(");

      if (aUrls.size() > 0)
      {

      for (String url : aUrls)
      {
        inHashes.append(url.hashCode()).append(","); 

        inURLs.append("\"").append(url.replace("\"", "\\\"")).append("\"").append(",");
      }

      }

      inHashes.deleteCharAt(inHashes.length()-1);
      inURLs.deleteCharAt(inURLs.length()-1);

      inHashes.append(")");
      inURLs.append(")");

      return sql.append(inHashes).append(" AND url IN ").append(inURLs).toString();
    }

  }

  public static void main(String[] args) { 
        List<String> urls = new ArrayList<String>();

    for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
      urls.add("http://www.google.com/" + System.currentTimeMillis());
      urls.add("http://www.yahoo.com/" + System.currentTimeMillis());
      urls.add("http://www.bing.com/" + System.currentTimeMillis());
    }


    long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for (int i = 0; i < 300; i++) {
      GetUrlsIn(5, urls, true);
    }
    long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println("elapsed time with checks at every iteration: " + (endTime-startTime) + "(ms)");

    startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for (int i = 0; i < 300; i++) {
      GetUrlsIn(5, urls, false);
    }
    endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println("elapsed time with deletion at the end: " + (endTime-startTime) + "(ms)");
  }
}

Answer 3

You need Class Separator.

Separator s = new Separator(", ");
for(int i : array)
{
     builder.append(s).append(i);
}

The implementation of class Separator is straight forward. It wraps a string that is returned on every call of toString() except for the first call, which returns an empty string.

Answer 4

This is almost a repeat of this StackOverflow question. What you want is StringUtils, and to call the join method.

StringUtils.join(strArr, ',');

Answer 5

If you're only turning an array into a comma delimited array, many languages have a join function for exactly this. It turns an array into a string with a delimiter between each element.

Answer 6

Another way to do this:

String delim = "";
for (int i : ints) {
    sb.append(delim).append(i);
    delim = ",";
}

Update: For Java 8, you now have Collectors