Collectors.minBy/maxBy behavior for null value

[Peter Levart]

On 02/22/2016 11:06 AM, Tagir Valeev wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Consider the following code:
>
> Comparator<String> cmp = Comparator.nullsFirst(Comparator.naturalOrder());
> System.out.println(Stream.of("a", "b",
> null).collect(Collectors.minBy(cmp)));
>
> It prints Optional.empty, so the result is indistinguishable from empty
> Stream (siimlar for maxBy). This behavior is not consistent with
> Stream.findFirst() (which throws NPE if the resulting element is null).
> Currently minBy spec says:
>
> This produces a result equivalent to:
>       reducing(BinaryOperator.minBy(comparator))
>
> However reducing spec says nothing what will occur if the result of
> reduction is null. To my opinion at very least the spec of reducing should
> be updated to specify the behavior when reducing result is null. It
> probably would also be nice to add a note into minBy/maxBy spec about this.
>
> What do you think?

My personal opinion is that it would be better to throw NPE in this case 
(like with findFirst()). Silently converting null element to 
Optional.empty() is probably not the desired behavior and I doubt anyone 
is exploiting this implementation detail in such way.

Regards, Peter

>
> With best regards,
> Tagir Valeev.