To which class does the concept of Flow in programming or systems belong?

In Android, the concept of Flow refers to a class of asynchronous data streams and is implemented through the Kotlin Coroutines library. Flow is a cold stream that emits values sequentially and supports asynchronous data processing.

Flow can be considered an alternative to RxJava Observable, but with tighter integration into Kotlin Coroutines.

Example of using Flow:

import kotlinx.coroutines.flow.Flow
import kotlinx.coroutines.flow.flow

fun simpleFlow(): Flow<Int> = flow {
    for (i in 1..3) {
        emit(i) // emit value
    }
}

Thus, Flow is a class that implements an asynchronous data stream, which can be collected and processed within coroutines.