Using a stream to iterate n times instead of using a for loop to create n items

Question

Say I want to create n items. Pre Java 8, I would write:

List list = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    list.add(new My         


        

Answer 1

If you know n in advance, I think it's more idiomatic to use one of the stream sources that creates a stream that is known to have exactly n elements. Despite the appearances, using limit(10) doesn't necessarily result in a SIZED stream with exactly 10 elements -- it might have fewer. Having a SIZED stream improves splitting in the case of parallel execution.

As Sotirios Delimanolis noted in a comment, you could do something like this:

List<MyClass> list = IntStream.range(0, n)
    .mapToObj(i -> new MyClass())
    .collect(toList());

An alternative is this, though it's not clear to me it's any better:

List<MyClass> list2 = Collections.nCopies(10, null).stream()
    .map(o -> new MyClass())
    .collect(toList());

You could also do this:

List<MyClass> list = Arrays.asList(new MyClass[10]);
list.replaceAll(o -> new MyClass());

But this results in a fixed-size, though mutable, list.

Answer 2

You could use Stream#generate with limit:

Stream.generate(MyClass::new).limit(10);