```channelFlow { ... }.conflate().buffer(3, onBuff...

# coroutines

[kevin.cianfarini]

channelFlow { ... }.conflate().buffer(3, onBufferOverflow = Suspend)

will configure the underlying channel to have a size of three with an overflow strategy of DROP_OLDEST. The documentation mentions the following:

Conflation takes precedence over buffer() calls with any other capacity.

Is it a bug that my configured channel has a size of three, or does the above piece of documentation only apply to the buffer overflow strategy?

[kevin.cianfarini]

image.png

[kevin.cianfarini]

When debugging the fusing of:

channelFlow { ... }.conflate().buffer(3, onBufferOverflow = Suspend)

I’m seeing the following values in the debugger. This seems really unintuitive based on the documentation and therefore I think this might be a bug.

[Dmitry Khalanskiy [JB]]

Yep, the documentation is at least misleading.

[kevin.cianfarini]

Can I take this opportunity to advocate that conflation should always supersede buffering?

My use case is that I am writing library code which expects that the underlying channel is always conflated. If conflate can't make that guarantee, then I'll have to fall back to the regular flow builder with a manually configured channel.

[kevin.cianfarini]

Should I file a github issue for this?

[Dmitry Khalanskiy [JB]]

Sure.

[kevin.cianfarini]

https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines/issues/4352