Gradle 4.times. What is $it?

Question

I'm just newbie in Gradle and while I was reading the Gradle manual I came across the follwoing code example:

task count << {
    4.times { print "$it " }
}

It prints 1 2 3 4. Why? What is $it and why if we replaced $it to "a" we would receive

a a a a

Moreover

task count << {
    print "$it "
    print "$it "
    print "$it "
    print "$it "
}

gives the output task ':count' task ':count' task ':count' task ':count'

Answer 1

From http://groovy-lang.org/closures.html#implicit-it

• a closure defines an implicit parameter - 'it'

From http://grails.asia/groovy-times-loop-examples

• 'times' is a method for looping
• You can refer to the variable it to know the current index of the loop.