java 8 parallelStream() with sorted()

Question

JDK 8 EA is out now, and I am just trying to get used to the lambda and the new Stream API. I've tried to sort a list with parallel stream, but the result is always wrong:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("C");
        list.add("H");
        list.add("A");
        list.add("A");
        list.add("B");
        list.add("F");
        list.add("");

        list.parallelStream() // in parallel, not just concurrently!
            .filter(s -> !s.isEmpty()) // remove empty strings
            .distinct() // remove duplicates
            .sorted() // sort them
            .forEach(s -> System.out.println(s)); // print each item
    }
}

OUTPUT:

C
F
B
H
A

Note that each time the output is different. My questions is, is it a bug? or is it not possible to sort a list in parallel? if so, then why the JavaDoc doesn't state that? Last question, is there another operation whose output would differ depending on the stream type?

Answer 1

You need to use forEachOrdered, not forEach.

As per the forEach doc:

For parallel stream pipelines, this operation does not guarantee to respect the encounter order of the stream, as doing so would sacrifice the benefit of parallelism. For any given element, the action may be performed at whatever time and in whatever thread the library chooses. If the action accesses shared state, it is responsible for providing the required synchronization.