My main reason for using iterators over for loops in ActionScript is simplicity and re-usability. The Iterator pattern provides a standard mechanism for accessing collections of objects and re-usability is the key here, not necessarily performance.

When I need to loop over a collection, array etc. I can do so simply by typing an single instance of an iterator as an IIterator and use the IteratorFactory to get the type of iterator needed. I typically use Iterators more often than for loops.

Using an iterator you can also reduce your code as a while loop is much leaner than a for loop.

So again, it is a matter of personal preference.

Hope that answers your question,
Eric

This is cool. Coming from flash we have always used for loops. I’ve just had a discussion with the java guys here over why we should be using iterators over for loops although a lot of their reasoning came down to multithreading issues.

What is the main benefit on our platform of using iterators over for loops?

Regards,
Bjorn