Use flatMap() to elide nulls in a Stream

flatMapNulls.java

import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

class Scratch {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    final List<String> original =
        Stream.of("a", "b", null, "c")
            .collect(Collectors.toList());

    final List<String>
        withoutNulls =
        original.stream()
            .flatMap(s -> null == s ? Stream.empty() : Stream.of(s))
            .collect(Collectors.toList());

    System.out.printf("with nulls: %s\n", toString(original));
    System.out.printf("without nulls: %s\n", toString(withoutNulls));
  }

  private static String toString(final List<String> stream) {
    final AtomicInteger i = new AtomicInteger();
    final StringBuffer stringBuffer = new StringBuffer();
    stream.forEach(s -> {
      if (i.getAndAdd(1) > 0)
        stringBuffer.append(",");
      stringBuffer.append(s);
    });
    return stringBuffer.toString();
  }
}

I hate myself for writing Java 8 Stream code like this because, since Java Streams are called "streams" , I expect them to be immutable sequences like SICP streams or Clojure sequences. But they aren't! They are recipes for computation. And they are not reusable recipes for computation. So I'm always having to convert Streams to collections when instead, I'd like to be composing streams.