What is the difference between Groovy each and forEach?

Question

Simple question that I haven't been able to find a simple answer for on the googles: what is the difference between Groovy's each and forEach loops?

I made a simple example and the syntax and behavior seem identical:

    [1, 2].each { println it }
    [1, 2].forEach { println it }

Both print:

1
2

The only example I see of both in the Groovy Language Documentation seems to touch on the difference between lambdas and closures, but I can't relate that to the examples I've tried.

Thank you

Solution

The first distinction between each() and forEach() is that each() is provided by Groovy's GDK, while forEach() is provided by Java 8 (so it is not available in prior versions of Java.

Another difference is that each() accepts a Groovy closure while forEach() accepts a Consumer. From Groovy, this difference is not noticeable because Groovy transparently coerces the closure to a Consumer.

Comments

[orbfish]

I hadn't even thought of that being the Java one! Thanks, that makes sense.