for Loops

In its most simple use, a Scala for loop can be used to iterate over the elements in a collection. For example, given a sequence of integers:

val nums = Seq(1,2,3)

you can loop over them and print out their values like this:

for (n <- nums) println(n)

This is what the result looks like in the Scala REPL:

scala> val nums = Seq(1,2,3)
nums: Seq[Int] = List(1, 2, 3)

scala> for (n <- nums) println(n)
1
2
3

That example uses a sequence of integers, which has the data type Seq[Int]. Here’s a list of strings which has the data type List[String]:

val people = List(
    "Bill", 
    "Candy", 
    "Karen", 
    "Leo", 
    "Regina"
)

You print its values using a for loop just like the previous example:

for (p <- people) println(p)

Seq and List are two types of linear collections. In Scala these collection classes are preferred over Array. (More on this later.)

The foreach method

For the purpose of iterating over a collection of elements and printing its contents you can also use the foreach method that’s available to Scala collections classes. For example, this is how you use foreach to print the previous list of strings:

people.foreach(println)

foreach is available on most collections classes, including sequences, maps, and sets.

Using for and foreach with Maps

You can also use for and foreach when working with a Scala Map (which is similar to a Java HashMap). For example, given this Map of movie names and ratings:

val ratings = Map(
    "Lady in the Water"  -> 3.0, 
    "Snakes on a Plane"  -> 4.0, 
    "You, Me and Dupree" -> 3.5
)

You can print the movie names and ratings using for like this:

for ((name,rating) <- ratings) println(s"Movie: $name, Rating: $rating")

Here’s what that looks like in the REPL:

scala> for ((name,rating) <- ratings) println(s"Movie: $name, Rating: $rating")
Movie: Lady in the Water, Rating: 3.0
Movie: Snakes on a Plane, Rating: 4.0
Movie: You, Me and Dupree, Rating: 3.5

In this example, name corresponds to each key in the map, and rating is the name that’s assigned to each value in the map.

You can also print the ratings with foreach like this:

ratings.foreach {
    case(movie, rating) => println(s"key: $movie, value: $rating")
}