Streams Glossary

Browse 15 streams terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

15 Streams Terms

Async Stream
A sequence of values or chunks produced and consumed asynchronously over time rather than all at once. Async streams are used for large data processing,...
Binary Stream
A sequential flow of raw bytes read from or written to a file, socket, device, or pipeline over time. Binary streams are used when data must be handled...
Byte Stream
A sequential flow of bytes read from or written to a source such as a file, socket, process, or device. Byte streams are the common abstraction used for binary...
Circular Buffer
A fixed-size buffer that reuses storage in a wraparound fashion, treating the end of the buffer as connected to the beginning. Circular buffers are useful for...
File Handling
The set of operations for creating, reading, writing, and closing files. Proper file handling includes using context managers or RAII to ensure files are...
Observable
A lazy, push-based data source in reactive programming (as defined by RxJS, ReactiveX, and the TC39 Observable proposal) that emits a sequence of values over...
Output Buffering
A technique in which output destined for a stream (stdout, an HTTP response, a file) is accumulated in a memory buffer rather than being sent immediately,...
Reactive
A programming paradigm centered on data streams and the propagation of change. Reactive systems automatically update outputs when inputs change. In frontend...
Reader
An interface or trait that abstracts reading bytes from an underlying source — files, sockets, buffers, or compressed streams — through a common read() method....
Rx
Short for Reactive Extensions — a family of libraries (RxJava, RxSwift, RxJS, Rx.NET) that implement the Observable pattern for composing asynchronous and...
Standard Output
The default output stream (file descriptor 1) to which a process writes its normal program output. In Unix-like systems, stdout is typically connected to the...
Stdin
Standard input (file descriptor 0) — the default input stream from which a process reads data, typically connected to the keyboard in an interactive session or...
Stdout
Standard output (file descriptor 1) — the default output stream where a process writes its normal results. It is line-buffered when connected to a terminal and...
Transform Stream
A duplex stream that reads input, applies a transformation function to each chunk, and writes the modified output — sitting between a readable and writable...
Writer
An abstraction or interface — such as Go's io.Writer or Java's java.io.Writer — that represents a destination to which bytes or characters can be sequentially...

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