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Stream in Java
Introduced in Java 8, the Stream API is used to process collections of objects. A stream is a sequence of objects that supports various methods which can be pipelined to produce the desired result. The features of Java stream are –
- A stream is not a data structure instead it takes input from the Collections, Arrays or I/O channels.
- Streams don’t change the original data structure, they only provide the result as per the pipelined methods.
- Each intermediate operation is lazily executed and returns a stream as a result, hence various intermediate operations can be pipelined. Terminal operations mark the end of the stream and return the result.
Different Operations On Streams Intermediate Operations:
map
: Themap
method is used to map the items in the collection to other objects according to the Function passed as argument.filter
: Thefilter
method is used to select elements as per the Predicate passed as argument.sorted
: Thesorted
method is used to sort the stream.
Terminal Operations:
collect
: Thecollect
method is used to return the result of the intermediate operations performed on the stream.forEach
: TheforEach
method is used to iterate through every element of the stream.reduce
: Thereduce
method is used to reduce the elements of a stream to a single value. The reduce method takes aBinaryOperator
as a parameter.
Program to demonstrate the use of Stream
//a simple program to demonstrate the use of stream in java
import java.util.*;
import java.util.stream.*;
class Demo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// create a list of integers
List<Integer> number = Arrays.asList(2,3,4,5);
// demonstration of map method
List<Integer> square = number.stream().map(x -> x*x).
collect(Collectors.toList());
System.out.println(square);
// create a list of String
List<String> names =
Arrays.asList("Reflection","Collection","Stream");
// demonstration of filter method
List<String> result = names.stream().filter(s->s.startsWith("S")).
collect(Collectors.toList());
System.out.println(result);
// demonstration of sorted method
List<String> show =
names.stream().sorted().collect(Collectors.toList());
System.out.println(show);
// create a list of integers
List<Integer> numbers = Arrays.asList(2,3,4,5,2);
// collect method returns a set
Set<Integer> squareSet =
numbers.stream().map(x->x*x).collect(Collectors.toSet());
System.out.println(squareSet);
// demonstration of forEach method
number.stream().map(x->x*x).forEach(y->System.out.println(y));
// demonstration of reduce method
int even =
number.stream().filter(x->x%2==0).reduce(0,(ans,i)-> ans+i);
System.out.println(even);
}
}
Output:
[4, 9, 16, 25]
[Stream]
[Collection, Reflection, Stream]
[16, 4, 9, 25]
4
9
16
25
6
Important Points/Observations:
- A stream consists of source followed by zero or more intermediate methods combined together (pipelined) and a terminal method to process the objects obtained from the source as per the methods described.
- Stream is used to compute elements as per the pipelined methods without altering the original value of the object.