iterating over linkedBlockingQueue and removing elements at the same time

Question

My code is as follows:

private LinkedBlockingQueue<TrackedOperation> operations = new LinkedBlockingQueue<TrackedOperation>(10000);
        Iterator<TrackedOperation> it = operations.iterator();
        while (it.hasNext()) {
            TrackedOperation op = operations.remove();
                            ...
        }

My question is:

Would iterator be always pointing to the head of the queue and is that the expected behavior?

If I am not making sense, then my question is what would be the behavior of iterator? Is my operations queue and iterator consistent in the above code?

Answer 1

Here what I do,

while (!linkedBlockingQueue.isEmpty()) {
    linkedBlockingQueue.remove(); //do what you want to with it
}

Answer 2

You can only call it.remove() after you've called it.next(). The element returned by it.next() is the one that will then be removed by the it.remove() operation.

Answer 3

Accepting @assylias answer above

You would generally while(true) E e = queue.take(); with a blocking queue. Then interrupt the thread or send a special item to break the loop