How to negate a method reference predicate

assylias picture assylias · Jan 31, 2014 · Viewed 145.5k times · Source

In Java 8, you can use a method reference to filter a stream, for example:

Stream<String> s = ...;
long emptyStrings = s.filter(String::isEmpty).count();

Is there a way to create a method reference that is the negation of an existing one, i.e. something like:

long nonEmptyStrings = s.filter(not(String::isEmpty)).count();

I could create the not method like below but I was wondering if the JDK offered something similar.

static <T> Predicate<T> not(Predicate<T> p) { return o -> !p.test(o); }

Answer

davidillsley picture davidillsley · Mar 18, 2014

I'm planning to static import the following to allow for the method reference to be used inline:

public static <T> Predicate<T> not(Predicate<T> t) {
    return t.negate();
}

e.g.

Stream<String> s = ...;
long nonEmptyStrings = s.filter(not(String::isEmpty)).count();

Update: Starting from Java-11, the JDK offers a similar solution built-in as well.