for loop and colon operator
My question is very simple and I appreciate any help. I found the following code in a text book and I don't know what is the propose of the "colon" operator inside the "for" loop.
// create four-element Employee array
Employee employees[] = new Employee[ 4 ];
// initialize array with Employees
employees[ 0 ] = salariedEmployee;
employees[ 1 ] = hourlyEmployee;
employees[ 2 ] = commissionEmployee;
employees[ 3 ] = basePlusCommissionEmployee;
System.out.println( "Employees processed polymorphically:\n" );
// generically process each element in array employees
for ( Employee currentEmployee : employees ){
System.out.println( currentEmployee ); // invokes toString
// determine whether element is a BasePlusCommissionEmployee
if ( currentEmployee instanceof BasePlusCommissionEmployee )
{
// downcast Employee reference to
// BasePlusCommissionEmployee reference
BasePlusCommissionEmployee employee =
( BasePlusCommissionEmployee ) currentEmployee;
double oldBaseSalary = employee.getBaseSalary();
employee.setBaseSalary( 1.10 * oldBaseSalary );
System.out.printf(
"new base salary with 10%% increase is: $%,.2f\n",
employee.getBaseSalary() );
} // end if
System.out.printf(
"earned $%,.2f\n\n", currentEmployee.earnings() );
} // end for
