Kotlin Starter Pack

Type inference

Kotlin is a statically type language. Regarding to that specification, that means that the compiler will know what is the type of a variable or the return type of a function. That's why you can write val str = "hello" instead of val str : String = "hello", or even fun sum(ints: Lst<Int>) = ints.sum() instead of fun sum(ints : List<Int>) : Int = ints.sum(). In a lot of cases you will be allowed to omit the declaration type, so your code should be more concise.

Type checks

If you do Java, you may know the keyword instanceof that help you defined what is the type of the object you're working on. In Kotlin, we use the keyword is, or !is for the negation.

Smart casts

The is and !is operators help us to avoid type checks along code block. If a variable is checked as a String, the code block that follow that check will consider the variable as a String without casting it. This allow you to call function on variable without be worried of any casting action. It works as well with nullable variable.

if (x is String) print(x.length) // x is automatically cast to String

val x : String? // nullable String
// Computation... 
print(x?.length) // x might be null, so we use the `?.` operator 
if (x != null) print(x.length) // in that case x is automatically cast to non-null String

when (x) {
    is Int -> print(x + 1)
    is String -> print(x.length + 1)
    is IntArray -> print(x.sum())
}