computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, a stream is a

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is cal ...

of potentially unlimited

data element In metadata, the term data element is an atomic unit of data that has precise meaning or precise semantics. A data element has: # An identification such as a data element name # A clear data element definition # One or more representation term ...

s made available over time. A stream can be thought of as items on a conveyor belt being processed one at a time rather than in large batches. Streams are processed differently from batch data. Normal functions cannot operate on streams as a whole because they have potentially unlimited data. Formally, streams are ''

codata The Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA) was established in 1966 as the Committee on Data for Science and Technology, originally part of the International Council of Scientific Unions, now part of the International ...

'' (potentially unlimited), not data (which is finite). Functions that operate on a stream producing another stream are known as

filters Filtration is a physical process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture. Filter, filtering, filters or filtration may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Fil ...

and can be connected in pipelines in a manner analogous to

function composition In mathematics, the composition operator \circ takes two function (mathematics), functions, f and g, and returns a new function h(x) := (g \circ f) (x) = g(f(x)). Thus, the function is function application, applied after applying to . (g \c ...

. Filters may operate on one item of a stream at a time or may base an item of output on multiple items of input such as a

moving average In statistics, a moving average (rolling average or running average or moving mean or rolling mean) is a calculation to analyze data points by creating a series of averages of different selections of the full data set. Variations include: #Simpl ...

Examples

The term "stream" is used in a number of similar ways: * "Stream editing", as with sed, awk, and

perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

. Stream editing processes a file or files, in-place, without having to load the file(s) into a user interface. One example of such use is to do a search and replace on all the files in a directory, from the command line. * On

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

and related systems based on the

C language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities o ...

, a stream is a source or

sink A sink (also known as ''basin'' in the UK) is a bowl-shaped plumbing fixture for washing hands, dishwashing, and other purposes. Sinks have a tap (faucet) that supplies hot and cold water and may include a spray feature to be used for fas ...

of data, usually individual bytes or characters. Streams are an abstraction used when reading or writing files, or communicating over

network socket A network socket is a software structure within a network node of a computer network that serves as an endpoint for sending and receiving data across the network. The structure and properties of a socket are defined by an application programming ...

s. The

standard streams In computer programming, standard streams are preconnected input and output communication channels between a computer program and its environment when it begins execution. The three input/output (I/O) connections are called standard input (stdin), ...

are three streams made available to all programs. * I/O devices can be interpreted as streams, as they produce or consume potentially unlimited data over time. * In

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

, input streams are generally implemented as

iterator In computer programming, an iterator is an object that progressively provides access to each item of a collection, in order. A collection may provide multiple iterators via its interface that provide items in different orders, such as forwards ...

s. * In the Scheme language and some others, a stream is a lazily evaluated or ''delayed'' sequence of data elements. A stream can be used similarly to a list, but later elements are only calculated when needed. Streams can therefore represent infinite

s and

series Series may refer to: People with the name * Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series * George Series (1920–1995), English physicist Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Series, the ordered sets used i ...

.SRFI 41: Streams
/ref> * In the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

standard library In computer programming, a standard library is the library (computing), library made available across Programming language implementation, implementations of a programming language. Often, a standard library is specified by its associated program ...

and in other

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s as well, a stream is an external iterator. As in Scheme, streams can represent finite or infinite sequences. *

Stream processing In computer science, stream processing (also known as event stream processing, data stream processing, or distributed stream processing) is a programming paradigm which views Stream (computing), streams, or sequences of events in time, as the centr ...

— in parallel processing, especially in graphic processing, the term stream is applied to hardware as well as

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

. There it defines the quasi-continuous flow of data that is processed in a dataflow programming language as soon as the program state meets the starting condition of the stream.

Applications

Streams can be used as the underlying data type for channels in

interprocess communication In computer science, interprocess communication (IPC) is the sharing of data between running processes in a computer system. Mechanisms for IPC may be provided by an operating system. Applications which use IPC are often categorized as clients ...

Other uses

The term "stream" is also applied to file system ''

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a Eating utensil, utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with whic ...

'', where multiple sets of data are associated with a single filename. Most often, there is one main stream that makes up the normal file data, while additional streams contain

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

. Here "stream" is used to indicate "variable size data", as opposed to fixed size metadata such as extended attributes, but differs from "stream" as used otherwise, meaning "data available over time, potentially infinite".

References

External links

An Approximate L1-Difference Algorithm for Massive Data Streams, 1995 Feigenbaum et al.
{{Data types Computer data Inter-process communication ja:ストリーム (プログラミング) ru:Поток данных tr:Stream

Examples

Applications

Other uses

See also

References

External links