Use filter before sorted.

Why is this an issue ?

When sorted is called right before filter, Stream sorts all the elements before filtering them. Doing the opposite is more efficient, first filter the items then sort the remaining ones only.

Here are the average results over 10 runs with 100,000 names:

filter then sorted: ~0.0197 sec
sorted then filter: ~0.0488 sec

🔍 Conclusion: Applying filter before sorted is more than twice as fast in this scenario — because the sort operation processes a much smaller list.

When can it be ignored ?

An exception might occur in rare and very specific cases: if the filter predicate is computationally expensive, it could be worth evaluating whether moving it after the sort has a measurable impact on performance. Another case is when the filter condition requires the list to be sorted first.

Non compliant examples

public void manipulateStream(List<String> list) {
        list.stream()
                .sorted()
                .filter(s -> s.startsWith("A"))
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
}

Compliant examples

public void manipulateStream(List<String> list) {
        list.stream()
                .filter(s -> s.startsWith("A"))
                .sorted()
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
}