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The Java™ Tutorials
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Language Basics
Variables
Primitive Data Types
Arrays
Summary of Variables
Questions and Exercises
Operators
Assignment, Arithmetic, and Unary Operators
Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators
Bitwise and Bit Shift Operators
Summary of Operators
Questions and Exercises
Expressions, Statements, and Blocks
Questions and Exercises
Control Flow Statements
The if-then and if-then-else Statements
The switch Statement
The while and do-while Statements
The for Statement
Branching Statements
Summary of Control Flow Statements
Questions and Exercises
Trail: Learning the Java Language
Lesson: Language Basics
Section: Control Flow Statements
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# Summary of Control Flow Statements

The `if-then` statement is the most basic of all the control flow statements. It tells your program to execute a certain section of code only if a particular test evaluates to `true`. The `if-then-else` statement provides a secondary path of execution when an "if" clause evaluates to `false`. Unlike `if-then` and `if-then-else`, the `switch` statement allows for any number of possible execution paths. The `while` and `do-while` statements continually execute a block of statements while a particular condition is `true`. The difference between `do-while` and `while` is that `do-while` evaluates its expression at the bottom of the loop instead of the top. Therefore, the statements within the `do` block are always executed at least once. The `for` statement provides a compact way to iterate over a range of values. It has two forms, one of which was designed for looping through collections and arrays.

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