Kotlin Type-Inference Puzzler

byGrzegorz Piwowarek
December 4, 2017
2 minute read

Kotlin takes Type-Inference to the next level (at least in comparison to Java) which is great, but there’re scenarios, in which it can backfire on us.

The Riddle

fun foo(int: Int?) = {
    println(int)
}

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    listOf(42).forEach { foo(it) }
}

And the question is: what does the puzzler() method print and why it’s not 42? Assume that the main() method gets executed.

The answer can be found at the very end of the article.

Explanation

In Kotlin, we’ve got not only a local variable type inference (which is also coming to Java) but also the return value type inference when writing single-expression methods.

Which means that if we write a method:

fun foo() : String  {
    return "42"
}

We can rewrite it using the single-expression method syntax and ignore the explicit type declaration and the return keyword:

fun foo() = "42"

So, if we have a method:

fun foo(int: Int?) : Unit {
    println(int)
    return Unit
}

we could get rid of the return type declaration, as well as the explicit return statement by leveraging single-expression method syntax, right? but we already know that the following doesn’t work:

fun foo(int: Int?) = {
    println(int)
}

The devil’s in the details but everything becomes crystal clear if we specify the return type explicitly:

fun foo(int: Int?) : () -> Unit = {
    println(int)
}

If we look closely, it can be seen that we mixed two approaches here and actually defined a method that doesn’t return Unit but a () -> Unit itself – which is simply an action that doesn’t accept any parameters and doesn’t return anything – which is semantically equivalent to returning a java.lang.Runnable instance.

This is because Kotlin utilizes curly braces not only for defining classes/methods but also for defining Lambda Expressions and { println(42) } is a valid Lambda Expression declaration:

val foo: () -> Unit = { println(42) }

So, our original example is simply a Higher-Order Function accepting an Int parameter and returning a function that prints it – when we return it in the forEach() the return value just gets ignored.

So, if we want to fix our example, we have two ways to go.

Explicitly call invoke() on the returned function:

listOf(42)
  .forEach { foo(it).invoke() }

or simply define the method properly by removing the “=” sign:

fun foo(int: Int?) {
    println(int)
}

or by leveraging the single-expression method syntax:

fun foo(int: Int?) = println(int)

That’s why I encourage my fellow team members to declare return types explicitly.

Code snippets can be found on GitHub.

Answer

The method prints nothing.

Grzegorz Piwowarek

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Need to make a quick json fixes – JSONPath for rescue

byArek Burdach
March 22, 2015

From time to time I have a need to do some fixes in my json data. In a world of flat files I do this with grep/sed/awk tool chain. How to handle it for JSON? Searching for a solution I came across the JSONPath. It quite mature tool (from 2007) but I haven't hear about it so I decided to share my experience with others.

First of all you can try it without pain online: http://jsonpath.curiousconcept.com/. Full syntax is described at http://goessner.net/articles/JsonPath/

But also you can download python binding and run it from command line:

$ sudo apt-get install python-jsonpath-rw
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install -U jsonpath

After that you can use inside python or with simple cli wrapper:

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, json, jsonpath

path = sys.argv[1]

result = jsonpath.jsonpath(json.load(sys.stdin), path)
print json.dumps(result, indent=2)

… you can use it in your shell e.g. for json:

{
"store": {
"book": [
      {
"category": "reference",
"author": "Nigel Rees",
"title": "Sayings of the Century",
"price": 8.95
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "Evelyn Waugh",
"title": "Sword of Honour",
"price": 12.99
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "Herman Melville",
"title": "Moby Dick",
"isbn": "0-553-21311-3",
"price": 8.99
      },
      {
"category": "fiction",
"author": "J. R. R. Tolkien",
"title": "The Lord of the Rings",
"isbn": "0-395-19395-8",
"price": 22.99
      }
    ],
"bicycle": {
"color": "red",
"price": 19.95
    }
  }
}

You can print only book nodes with price lower than 10 by:

$ jsonpath '$..book[?(@.price

Result:

[
  {
"category": "reference",
"price": 8.95,
"title": "Sayings of the Century",
"author": "Nigel Rees"
  },
  {
"category": "fiction",
"price": 8.99,
"title": "Moby Dick",
"isbn": "0-553-21311-3",
"author": "Herman Melville"
  }
]

Have a nice JSON hacking!From time to time I have a need to do some fixes in my json data. In a world of flat files I do this with grep/sed/awk tool chain. How to handle it for JSON? Searching for a solution I came across the JSONPath. It quite mature tool (from 2007) but I haven't hear about it so I decided to share my experience with others.

DDevelopment & Design