Proposal: JDK-8148917 Enhanced-For Statement Should Allow Streams

[Brian Goetz]

> Due to how Iterable is specified now it does not promise multiple 
> iterations, but due to how most (all that I know of except 
> DirectoryStream or some 3rd party) Iterables are implemented now, the 
> common expectation is that it does. By implementing more Iterable(s) 
> that don't support multiple iteration (regardless of whether they 
> implement this new sub-type or not), this expectation will be less and 
> less honored. Perhaps this is not so bad. At various occasions the 
> specification has been changed to accommodate the long-standing 
> behavior or expectation of behavior, but this seems not to be one of 
> them.

Correct.  But, with separate Iterable and IterableOnce, the spec for 
Iterable can say "If you don't support multiple iteration, you should 
implement IO."  Which is OK, because at least those classes are being 
explicit.

> Let's pretend for a moment that Iterable specification was changed to 
> guarantee multi-pass iteration. In that case the IterableAtLeastOnce 
> as a supertype of multi-pass Iterable would make much more sense, 
> wouldn't it?

Then we couldn't use Stream in foreach without a language change, which 
is the whole point of this exercise.