Which method is used to skip the first few elements in a stream?

The skip() method in the Stream API is used to skip the first n elements in a stream and return a stream containing the remaining elements. This method is particularly useful when you want to ignore a certain number of elements at the beginning of a stream and process the rest. The skip() method takes a single argument, which specifies the number of elements to skip. For example, skip(3) will skip the first three elements in the stream and return a stream starting from the fourth element.

The skip() method is an intermediate operation, meaning it creates a new stream that can be further processed by other stream operations. The final result is obtained when a terminal operation, such as collect() or forEach(), is applied to the stream. The skip() method is often used in combination with other operations, such as limit(), to control the portion of the stream that is processed. For example, you can use skip(2) followed by limit(5) to create a stream that processes the third through seventh elements of the original stream.

In addition to its primary use case, the skip() method can also be helpful in pagination scenarios, where you need to process a specific “page” of elements from a larger dataset. By skipping the appropriate number of elements, you can easily navigate through different sections of a stream, making skip() a versatile tool in the Stream API.