On Tue, 3 Nov 2020 01:33:32 GMT, Stuart Marks <sma...@openjdk.org> wrote:
> This change introduces a new terminal operation on Stream. This looks like a > convenience method for Stream.collect(Collectors.toList()) or > Stream.collect(Collectors.toUnmodifiableList()), but it's not. Having this > method directly on Stream enables it to do what can't easily by done by a > Collector. In particular, it allows the stream to deposit results directly > into a destination array (even in parallel) and have this array be wrapped in > an unmodifiable List without copying. > > In the past we've kept most things from the Collections Framework as > implementations of Collector, not directly on Stream, whereas only > fundamental things (like toArray) appear directly on Stream. This is true of > most Collections, but it does seem that List is special. It can be a thin > wrapper around an array; it can handle generics better than arrays; and > unlike an array, it can be made unmodifiable (shallowly immutable); and it > can be value-based. See John Rose's comments in the bug report: > > https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8180352?focusedCommentId=14133065&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-14133065 > > This operation is null-tolerant, which matches the rest of Streams. This > isn't specified, though; a general statement about null handling in Streams > is probably warranted at some point. > > Finally, this method is indeed quite convenient (if the caller can deal with > what this operation returns), as collecting into a List is the most common > stream terminal operation. src/java.base/share/classes/java/util/ImmutableCollections.java line 199: > 197: * safely reused as the List's internal storage, avoiding a > defensive copy. Declared > 198: * with Object... instead of E... as the parameter type so that > varargs calls don't > 199: * accidentally create an array of type other than Object[]. Why would that be a problem? If the resulting list is immutable, then the actual array type doesn't really matter, right? ------------- PR: https://git.openjdk.java.net/jdk/pull/1026