Iterating through a Collection, avoiding ConcurrentModificationException when removing objects in a loop

Iterator.remove() is safe, you can use it like this:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();

// This is a clever way to create the iterator and call iterator.hasNext() like
// you would do in a while-loop. It would be the same as doing:
//     Iterator<String> iterator = list.iterator();
//     while (iterator.hasNext()) {
for (Iterator<String> iterator = list.iterator(); iterator.hasNext();) {
    String string = iterator.next();
    if (string.isEmpty()) {
        // Remove the current element from the iterator and the list.
        iterator.remove();
    }
}

Note that Iterator.remove() is the only safe way to modify a collection during iteration; the behavior is unspecified if the underlying collection is modified in any other way while the iteration is in progress.

Source: docs.oracle > The Collection Interface

And similarly, if you have a ListIterator and want to add items, you can use ListIterator#add, for the same reason you can use Iterator#remove — it's designed to allow it.

In your case you tried to remove from a list, but the same restriction applies if trying to put into a Map while iterating its content.

This works:

Iterator<Integer> iter = l.iterator();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
    if (iter.next() == 5) {
        iter.remove();
    }
}

I assumed that since a foreach loop is syntactic sugar for iterating, using an iterator wouldn't help... but it gives you this .remove() functionality.

With Java 8 you can use the new removeIf method. Applied to your example:

Collection<Integer> coll = new ArrayList<>();
//populate

coll.removeIf(i -> i == 5);

Since the question has been already answered i.e. the best way is to use the remove method of the iterator object, I would go into the specifics of the place where the error "java.util.ConcurrentModificationException" is thrown.

Every collection class has a private class which implements the Iterator interface and provides methods like next(), remove() and hasNext().

The code for next looks something like this...

public E next() {
    checkForComodification();
    try {
        E next = get(cursor);
        lastRet = cursor++;
        return next;
    } catch(IndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
        checkForComodification();
        throw new NoSuchElementException();
    }
}

Here the method checkForComodification is implemented as

final void checkForComodification() {
    if (modCount != expectedModCount)
        throw new ConcurrentModificationException();
}

So, as you can see, if you explicitly try to remove an element from the collection. It results in modCount getting different from expectedModCount, resulting in the exception ConcurrentModificationException.

You can either use the iterator directly like you mentioned, or else keep a second collection and add each item you want to remove to the new collection, then removeAll at the end. This allows you to keep using the type-safety of the for-each loop at the cost of increased memory use and cpu time (shouldn't be a huge problem unless you have really, really big lists or a really old computer)

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    Collection<Integer> l = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    Collection<Integer> itemsToRemove = new ArrayList<>();
    for (int i=0; i < 10; i++) {
        l.add(Integer.of(4));
        l.add(Integer.of(5));
        l.add(Integer.of(6));
    }
    for (Integer i : l)
    {
        if (i.intValue() == 5) {
            itemsToRemove.add(i);
        }
    }

    l.removeAll(itemsToRemove);
    System.out.println(l);
}