advancedMultithreading & Concurrency

What's the difference between thenApply(), thenCompose(), and thenCombine() in CompletableFuture?

thenApply() transforms the result with a plain function. thenCompose() chains to ANOTHER CompletableFuture-returning function (flattens nested futures, like flatMap). thenCombine() waits for two independent futures and combines both results together.

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