In this chapter, we will talk about streams. Streams have existed since the early days of UNIX. They have proven to be a dependable way to compose large systems out of small components, which does one thing well. Streams restrict the implementation of a surface area into a consistent interface that can be reused. You can plug the output of one stream as the input to another and use libraries that operate abstractly on streams to institute high-level flow control. Streams are an important component of small program design and have important abstractions that are worth considering. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Single-subscription streams versus broadcast streams
The stream framework API