If expressions are the meat of programming, than I suppose that loops and other control statements are the recipes for using the meat. (Maybe that's taking the analogy a bit too far.) Control statements tell Java what to do when. They bring order and reason to a program and help avoid repeating code.

Generally speaking, a control statement is a statement that directs the execution of other statements. More specifically, a selection statement is one that tells Java which statement should be executed, depending on the evaluation of an expression. A loop statement is one that doubles back on itself, repeating the same statements over and over until a certain condition is met.

There are five main types of control statements used in Java:

Don't worry if these don't make sense yet. We'll be going into each one individually. So, let's begin.