Are Java streams stages sequential?

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I have a question on the intermediate stages sequential state - are the operations from a stage applied to all the input stream (items) or are all the stages / operations applied to each stream item?

I'm aware the question might not be easy to understand, so I'll give an example. On the following stream processing:

List<String> strings = Arrays.asList("Are Java streams intermediate stages sequential?".split(" "));
strings.stream()
           .filter(word -> word.length() > 4)
           .peek(word -> System.out.println("f: " + word))
           .map(word -> word.length())
           .peek(length -> System.out.println("m: " + length))
           .forEach(length -> System.out.println("-> " + length + "\n"));

My expectation for this code is that it will output:

f: streams
f: intermediate
f: stages
f: sequential?

m: 7
m: 12
m: 6
m: 11

-> 7
-> 12
-> 6
-> 11

Instead, the output is:

f: streams
m: 7
-> 7

f: intermediate
m: 12
-> 12

f: stages
m: 6
-> 6

f: sequential?
m: 11
-> 11

Are the items just displayed for all the stages, due to the console output? Or are they also processed for all the stages, one at a time?

I can further detail the question, if it's not clear enough.

4 Answers
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