For Each (Loop)

The foreach loop is a simplified version of the repeat statement. It simplifies the loop criteria by iterating over a collection of objects assigning each value to a scoped variable. In the following example each employee in a collection is assigned to the variable 'emp':

foreach(emp : acme.employees) result = "Name: " + emp.name + ", Age: " + emp.age;

The result from this would be an array of Strings:

["Name: Jennifer Smith, Age: 39", "Name: Bob Seinfeld, Age: 23", ...]

The primary reason for this loop type is to simplify the definition so we don't have to reference each object by using the collection and index reference. If you are just looking to extract a specific field from a collection then you can simply use the following without the loop:

acme.employees.name

Getting back to the for each, we can also filter the results back from the loop. In the following example we are filtering the names returned by age:

foreach(emp : acme.employees) emp.age > 40 ? result = emp.name : null;

This would just return the names of only those individuals older than 40. This use case is not perfect as you see we are only setting the result by using a conditional where the false case return an unused 'null' value. This could be fixed by adding a single conditional 'if' statement, but this exceeds the scope for this simple scenario. Please see Adding Statements for more information.