39. Introduction

Most code needs to reflect a decision-making process. A decision may be an either-or in which we process one set of statements rather than another. Another decision may be to run the same set of statements for a finite (or infinite) period.

Groovy supports a range of control-flow statements:

• The conditional statements:
  • if and if-else
  • switch
  • try-catch-finally
• The looping statements:
  • for
  • for-each
  • while
• The branching statements:
  • break
  • continue
  • return

This section will describe the conditional and looping statements and discuss how and where the break and continue branching statements fit in.

The try-catch-finally statement will be explored in the Exceptions section.

The return statement will be explored in the Methods section and the Closures section.