Stream in production code

Question

Do people really use Scala's Stream class in production code, or is it primarily of academic interest?

Answer 1

There's no problem with Stream, except when people use it to replace Iterator -- as opposed to replacing List, which is the collection most similar to it. In that particular case, one has to be careful in its use. On the other hand, one has to be careful using Iterator as well, since each element can only be iterated through once.

So, since both have their own problems, why single out Stream's? I daresay it's simply that people are used to Iterator from Java, whereas Stream is a functional thing.

Answer 2

Even though I wrote that Iterator is what I want to use nearly all the time I do use Stream in production code. I just don't automatically assume that the cells are garbage collected.

Sometimes Stream fits the problem perfectly. I think the api gives some good examples where recursion is involved...