In what situations are intermediate operations typically used when working with data streams in Stream?

Intermediate operations in Stream are used for transforming, filtering, or sorting data without immediate execution. They allow building a chain of operations that will only be executed upon a terminal operation.

They are typically used when:

• Filtering elements based on a condition (filter)
• Transforming elements into another type or format (map)
• Sorting or limiting the number of elements (sorted, limit)

For example, to get a list of user names starting with the letter "A":

List<String> names = Arrays.asList("Anna", "Bob", "Alice", "Tom");
List<String> filtered = names.stream()
    .filter(name -> name.startsWith("A"))
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

Here, filter is an intermediate operation that is not executed immediately, but the processing occurs when collect is called.