Philosophical question: is `shareIn` an intermediate operator, or a terminal operator? Both? Neither...

# coroutines

[Sam]

Philosophical question: is shareIn an intermediate operator, or a terminal operator? Both? Neither?

[ross_a]

I'd say both, depends on started

[ross_a]

Eagerly, terminal, doesn't matter what the downstream does
WhileSubscribed, not, upstream behaviour is affected by the downstream

[ross_a]

Lazily, a mix of both 🙂

[Sam]

Makes sense, I like the idea of basing the decision on whether it can be affected by downstream terminal operators

[Sam]

And yet, errors from the upstream will always be handled by the sharing coroutine, never by the downstream. That's an argument for calling it a terminal. To be honest, I think the answer to this particular question is probably just undefined 😄

[Sam]

🤔 I suppose catch also has the same error-trapping properties, and that's intermediate. So maybe I'm changing my own mind there.

[ross_a]

Yeah I was going to say 🙂 you could do the equivalent with catch and onComplete