What is the difference between util.pump(streamA, streamB) and streamA.pipe(streamB)?

Question

The source code looks very similar: pump, pipe. Why would I use one instead of the other? Is one simply a better version of the other?

Answer 1

There are two significant difference between the two. The first is that the util.pump method can operate on two "stream-like" objects, while the Stream.prototype.pipe assumes that they are stream objects. The second is because of that assumption, the pipe can be chained ( streamA | streamB | streamC ) while the former can't (easily).