Is Android Cursor.moveToNext() Documentation Correct?

Question

boolean android.database.Cursor.moveToNext() documentation says:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/database/Cursor.html#moveToNext%28%29

Move the cursor to the next row.

This method will return false if the cursor is already past the last entry in the result set.

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However, my book says to do the following to extract data from a cursor:

Cursor myCursor = myDatabase.query(...);
if (myCursor.moveToFirst()) {
    do {
    int value = myCursor.getInt(VALUE_COL);
    // use value
    } while (myCursor.moveToNext());
}

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Who's right? These both can't be true. If you can't see the contradiction, imagine myCursor has 1 row returned from the query. The first call to getInt() will work, but then moveToNext() will return true because it is not "already" past the last entry in the result set. So now the cursor will be past the last entry and the second call to getInt() will do something undefined.

I suspect the documentation is wrong and should instead read:

This method will return false if the cursor is "already at" the last entry in the result set.

Must the cursor be already PAST (not AT) the last entry before the moveToNext() method returns false?

No Snark Please

Answer 1

A simpler idiom is:

Cursor cursor = db.query(...);
while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
    // use cursor
}

This works because the initial cursor position is -1, see the Cursor.getPosition() docs.

You can also find usages of cursors in the Android source code itself with this Google Code Search query. Cursor semantics are the same in SQLite database and content providers.

References: this question.