sum return type for primitive streams

[Brian Goetz]

Yep, that basically "sums" up the thought process we went through. 
There's no perfect answer, but this seems the least surprising.

On 2/1/2013 12:23 PM, Ali Lahijani wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com
> <mailto:brian.goetz at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>         Sorry to bring it up again, but integers also form a monoid
>         under min, max.
>         With Integer.MIN_VALUE and Integer.MAX_VALUE being the obvious
>         identities.
>
>
>     And what about longs?  Having the same operation with different
>     identities for coincident sets is pretty confusing.
>
>
> You're right, we usually view int and long as approximations of
> mathematical integers, which have no top/bottom elements. So main/max on
> pure infinite integers (BigIntegers) do not have an identity.
>
> One could argue that when you are using an IntStream or LongStream
> instead of a Steam<BigIntegers>, you have already decided that you only
> need a finite subset of mathematical integers, so you should be prepared
> to see MIN_VALUE and MAX_VALUE used as positive/negative infinity. But I
> don't see that argument persuading anyone.
>
> So, in such an imperfect world, I guess there is no better answer for
> this question.
>
> Best