'while' loop can be replaced with enhanced 'for' loop

Reports while loops that iterate over collections and can be replaced with enhanced for loops (foreach iteration syntax).

Example:

  Iterator it = c.iterator();
  while(it.hasNext()) {
    Object obj = it.next();
    System.out.println(obj);
  }

Can be replaced with:

  for (Object obj : c) {
    System.out.println(obj);
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

WhileLoopReplaceableByForEach

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

This inspection depends on the Java feature 'For-each loops', which is available since Java 5.

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection WhileLoopReplaceableByForEach

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025