Question

Discuss the differences between a list's regular iterator, which supports the use of a "for" loop, and its other list iterator that supports position-based operations. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Answer 1

Both iterator or list iterator is same for purpose ..i.e is to iterate through the list we have.
but the major difference between list iterator and iterator is quite simple

list iterator can iterate in both direction forward and backward direction ..it can move previous and even next.
but in regular iterator..it can iterate only in one direction.that is only unidirection.it can move only forward .
and one thing we should keep in mind that ..list iterator itarates only for list..but not for set map etc.
where as regular iterator works beyond than that.it uses form list ,map.set etc.

listiterator comes up with other benifit is..it can modify the data inside list during iteration like adding removing etc.
but in regualar iterator we cannot add element at a time of itearation..we can remove element ..

and another advantage of listiterator is..listiterator can get curent index position when traversing but ..normal iterator cannot give that ..as it get the index positon by using prev and next but normal iterator doesn not

iterator is not a class it is an interface and even listiterator is also an interface.

both are comes in java 1.2 and part of collection framework