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Terminal Operations

High Priority25 min readUpdated June 6, 2026

Terminal operations are what actually make a stream do something. Intermediate operations build up a pipeline, but until a terminal operation runs, no element is read, no filter is applied, no mapping happens. This lesson covers each terminal operation in depth: what it returns, when it short-circuits, what it does on an empty stream, and the small traps that lead to bugs.

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