Is for(;;) Faster Than while(true) in Java? A Bytecode Comparison

In JDK 8u source a quick grep shows 369 occurrences of for (;;) and 323 of while (true), indicating they are used similarly.

The for (;;) syntax originates from C, where programmers avoided writing the literal “1” in while (1). It expresses an infinite loop without a magic number.

In Java, both while (true) and for (;;) are semantically equivalent; the choice is often stylistic.

Compiling the two methods below with javac produces identical bytecode, confirming no performance difference at the compiler level.

public void foo() {
    int i = 0;
    while (true) { i++; }
}

/* bytecode:
0: iconst_0
1: istore_1
2: iinc 1, 1
5: goto 2
*/

public void bar() {
    int i = 0;
    for (;;) { i++; }
}

/* bytecode identical to above */

Since the generated bytecode is the same, any runtime performance difference would depend on later JIT optimizations, which also treat them equivalently.