No, filter does not scan the whole stream. It’s an intermediate operation, which returns a lazy stream (actually all intermediate operations return a lazy stream). To convince you, you can simply do the following test:
List<Integer> list = Arrays.asList(1, 10, 3, 7, 5);
int a = list.stream()
.peek(num -> System.out.println("will filter " + num))
.filter(x -> x > 5)
.findFirst()
.get();
System.out.println(a);
Which outputs:
will filter 1
will filter 10
10
You see that only the two first elements of the stream are actually processed.
So you can go with your approach which is perfectly fine.