Are if statements considered as an Iteration - vb.net

Question

Hello I'm just wondering whether an 'if' statement can be considered as an Iteration. Because Iteration is used until a certain criteria is meet to allow the code to continue.

Answer 1

An iteration is one cycle (one time through) a loop. If blocks are not loops.
For blocks or While blocks are loops, and executing one cycle of the contents of one of those blocks — what's inside the For block or the While block — is one iteration of the loop. If the entirety of a For block or While block is a conditional If block, then the If block could be one iteration... but not because it's an If block, but because it's what's inside the loop.

Answer 2

No, an iteration is a repetition of some code. Once doesn't count as a repetition, else all code would be considered an iteration.

Answer 3

The If statement by itself cannot be considered iteration. You can run a code block containing an if statement as many times as you wish, but this doesn't make the if statement an iterator by itself. It's what calls that code block which could stand for iteration.
If statement has some similarities with those other conditional statements :
Select Case
Try Catch
Explicit iterators are the followings :
For/Next - For Each/Next
Do/Loop
While/End While
However, you have some logic that could turn the usage of an if statement as the trigger to resume or stop conditions of a loop, without the usage of direct loop statements like For or While. But that doesn't turn that if statement an iterator by itself, because the iteration is the combination of the if statement and a specific logic allowed by the programming language.
Recursion :
Private Function ResumeIncrement(ByRef Number As Int32) As Boolean
Number = Number + 1
If Number < 10 Then
Return ResumeIncrement(Number)
Else
Return False
End If
End Function
GoTo statement :
Private Sub TestGoTo()
Dim Number As Int32 = 0
IncrementMore:
Number = Number + 1
If Number < 10 Then
GoTo IncrementMore
End If
End Sub
And as stated by Joel Coehoorn above, the If block can contain anything, including iterator blocks triggered by For, While or Do. If you remove the contained block, that doesn't change anything in what the if part is supposed to do : a conditional check !
You can also do the inverse, and use an If block to control the way an iteration behaves. Like :
If SomeCondition Then
Exit For
' Or Exit While, etc. ie, using the 'Exit' statement
End If
or
i = 0
Do
i = i + 1
' ^^ capture i in Debug or Console
' Control the value of i...
If i Mod 2 = 0 Then
i = i - 2
Else
i = i * 3
End If
Loop While i < 30
' i = 1, 4, 3, 10, 9, 28, 27, [Exit Do with i = 81]
In the two examples above, the If statement is either there to break the iteration, or try again, that said, to "control the iteration", but in no means, to stand for iterator by itself.

Answer 4

Here is also another answer to clear out one uncertainty. You asked
Are if statements considered as an Iteration ?
(You made "if statements" plural) Then you said
Hello I'm just wondering whether an 'if' statement can be considered
as an Iteration. Because Iteration is used until a certain
criteria is meet to allow the code to continue.
(then you made it singular.. ???) That "...Iteration is used until..." should self answer your question alone, assuming you're iterating code blocks (which is the way it is understood here)
But what if you're talking about iterating some possible values until one meets your requirements..?
If MyValue = "" Then
' ...
ElseIf MyValue.StartsWith("A") Then
' ...
ElseIf MyValue.ToUpper = "TEST" Then
' ...
Else
' ...
End If
is similar to :
Select Case True
Case MyValue = "":
' ...
Case MyValue.StartsWith("A")
' blah blah blah
End Select
or
If MyValue = "" Then GoTo EmptyString
If MyValue.StartsWith("A") Then GoTo StartsWithA
If MyValue.ToUpper() = "TEST" Then GoTo IsTEST Else GoTo DoNothing
EmptyString:
' ...
GoTo DoNothing
StartsWithA:
' ...
GoTo DoNothing
IsTEST:
' ...
GoTo DoNothing
DoNothing:
' Resume...
Etc.
That's not an iteration ! That's a list of evaluation that are processed in order. When a condition evaluates to True, the related code is executed. Unlike iteration, this is just a matter of selecting the right path and resume, not walking the very same path several times (loops)
Yes, you're iterating through a collection of possible values (condition states) but NO, you're not iterating the If statement. You're only checking the result of each single If test once.