Why does Scanner implement Iterator?

Question

I was just wondering why java.util.Scanner implements java.util.Iterator?

Scanner implements the remove method and throws an UnsupportedOperationExcept

Answer 1

Because implementing iterator allows the scanner to be used wherever a read only iterator can be used.

Furthermore it does implement the contract. From the Iterator documentation (emphasis mine):

remove() Removes from the underlying collection the last element returned by this iterator (optional operation).