Java ArrayList spliterator() Method

The spliterator() method returns a Spliterator for the list.

A spliterator is a special type of iterator. To learn how to use iterators, see our Java Iterator tutorial .

The Spliterator is considerably different from an ordinary iterator. The purpose of a spliterator is to separate a collection into smaller pieces so that each piece can be processed by a separate thread. The Spliterator interface has two important methods:

• trySplit() - Returns a new spliterator which can iterate through (usually and approximately) half of the elements that the original spliterator has access to, while the original spliterator can iterate through the remaining half.
• tryAdvance(Consumer action ) - Moves to the next item that is available to the spliterator and tries to perform an action on it. If there is no next item then it returns false . The action can be defined by a lambda expression.