Here's my Foo data class definition
data class Foo(
var fooArg: Array<Int?>? = null,
)
And here's the call to it:
val bar: Array<Int> = arrayOf(1,2,3)
val foo = Foo(fooArg = bar)
But this gives an error type mismatch: required Array<Int?>? but found Array<Int>
I am confused, it is expecting a nullable type, and I provide it with a non-null value, how is that type mismatch?
You declared bar as Array<Int>. Non-null types are not compatible with nullable types*. Change it to Array<Int?> and it will work:
val bar: Array<Int?> = arrayOf(1,2,3)
val foo = Foo(fooArg = bar)
Or alternatively:
val bar = arrayOf<Int?>(1, 2, 3)
*I think the correct thing to say is that arrays are invariant on the type parameter. But I get lost every time I try to understand it properly. 🤯
Adam's answer covers the solution, but it's also worth mentioning why what you're doing doesn't work. Java uses call-site variance annotations, unlike most other languages in existence. Kotlin takes the more traditional approach of using declaration-site variance annotations. That means that, when declaring a class which takes generic arguments, the writer of the class decides how it behaves with respect to subtypes.
Now, Int is a subtype of Int?. Namely, every Int is an Int?, but the reverse is not true. The question is: is Array<Int> a subtype of Array<Int?>? Well, covariant types such as List<T> preserve subtyping, so List<Int> is actually a subtype of List<Int?>. If you replace your example in the question with lists rather than arrays, everything works.
On the other hand, Array<T> is an invariant type. We can both read and write to an array, so it's never safe to upcast or downcast the type parameter. If we could, then the following would typecheck.
// Doesn't compile, for good reason
val myHealthyArray: Array<Int> = arrayOf(1);
val myScaryNullableArray: Array<Int?> = myHealthyArray;
myScaryNullableArray[0] = null;
Now my perfectly innocent myHealthyArray variable has a null in it that the type Array<Int> can't account for. That's contrary to everything Kotlin stands for, so it's disallowed on principle.
If you're only ever going to be using this data structure for reading, not writing, consider using List<T> or something covariant, which better describes the type of your function and also allows the subtyping relationships to work more fully.
Related
I am going to use the following method from Spring Data Kotlin extensions:
inline fun <reified T : Any> MongoOperations.bulkOps(bulkMode: BulkMode, collectionName: String? = null): BulkOperations
The question is: can I somehow avoid specifying T assuming I do not want to provide entity class name (that's because I will explicitly specify collectionName, and in this case class type can be null). I would like to type something like:
val ops = mongoTemplate.bulkOps<null>(BulkOperations.BulkMode.UNORDERED, collectionName = "i_know_better")
Is there a type literal for null with which I can parameterize bulkOps?
I think the short answer is no.
You seem to confuse types with values. null is a value and not a type so it cannot be used as a type in generic methods.
In your specific example, even if you could use null, looking at the code what would you expect to happen?
#Suppress("EXTENSION_SHADOWED_BY_MEMBER")
inline fun <reified T : Any> MongoOperations.bulkOps(bulkMode: BulkMode, collectionName: String? = null): BulkOperations =
if (collectionName != null) bulkOps(bulkMode, T::class.java, collectionName)
else bulkOps(bulkMode, T::class.java)
As you can see there's always T::class.java being called. What would be the result of null::class.java?
I'm unfamiliar with the Spring Data so I can't really provide an alternative, but I'd say you either need to search for another method or use an appropriate class here. The generic type is marked as T : Any so presumably it can be any non-nullable type. I wonder if Unit would work. Again, I'm not sure what this class is used for.
To answer the question in general, you can use Nothing? to represent the type that only contains the value null.
That being said, as #Fred already said, the method you're considering here explicitly states T : Any, meaning only non-nullable types are allowed. And it makes sense given that the function is accessing the class of T.
The primary target of this question is understanding the implementation and why it is like this. A solution or workaround for it would of course also be highly appreciated...
Given this example:
enum class SomeEnum(val customProp: String) {
FOO("fooProp"),
BAR("barProp");
}
#Target(AnnotationTarget.FUNCTION)
#Retention(AnnotationRetention.SOURCE)
annotation class TheAnnotation(
val targetValue: String
)
#TheAnnotation(targetValue = SomeEnum.FOO.customProp)
fun testFun() {
}
The compilation results in the following error:
SomeEnum.kt: (14, 30): An annotation argument must be a compile-time constant
For obvious reasons, annotation values (along with others) must be compile-time constants, which makes sense in many different ways. What is unclear to me, is why customProp is not treated as a constant by the compiler.
If enums are defined as finite, closed sets of information, they should, in my understanding, only be mutable at compile-time a.k.a. "compile-time constant". For the unlikely case that enums somehow are modifiable at runtime in Kotlin, that would answer the question as well.
Addendum:
The enum value (e.g. SomeEnum.FOO) is actually treated as a compile-time constant. The proof is, that the following slightly changed snippet compiles:
enum class SomeEnum(val customProp: String) {
FOO("fooProp"),
BAR("barProp");
}
#Target(AnnotationTarget.FUNCTION)
#Retention(AnnotationRetention.SOURCE)
#MustBeDocumented
annotation class TheAnnotation(
val targetValue: SomeEnum
)
#TheAnnotation(targetValue = SomeEnum.FOO)
fun testFun() {
}
enums are defined as finite, closed sets of information, they should, in my understanding, only be mutable at compile-time
Actually, no. An enum class is just a special kind of class, that doesn't allow you to create any new instances other than the ones that you name in the declaration, plus a bunch more syntactic sugars. Therefore, like a regular class, it can have properties whose values are only known at runtime, and properties that are mutable (though this is usually a very bad idea).
For example:
enum class Foo {
A, B;
val foo = System.currentTimeMillis() // you can't know this at compile time!
}
This basically de-sugars into:
class Foo private constructor(){
val foo = System.currentTimeMillis()
companion object {
val A = Foo()
val B = Foo()
}
}
(The actual generated code has a bit more things than this, but this is enough to illustrate my point)
A and B are just two (and the only two) instances of Foo. It should be obvious that Foo.A is not a compile time constant*, let alone Foo.A.foo. You could add an init block in Foo to run arbitrary code. You could even make foo a var, allowing you to do hideous things such as:
Foo.A.foo = 1
// now every other code that uses Foo.A.foo will see "1" as its value
You might also wonder why they didn't implement a more restricted enum that doesn't allow you to do these things, and is a compile time constant, but that is a different question.
See also: The language spec
* Though you can still pass Foo.A to an annotation. To an annotation, Foo.A is a compile time constant, because all the annotation has to do, is to store the name "Foo.A", not the object that it refers to, which has to be computed at runtime.
I need to pass the type of a class as a parameter because of type erasure.
class Abc<T : Any>(private val clazz: KClass<T>)
I can get it to work when T is something like String, but I'm having trouble creating the argument for clazz when the type is KClass<MutableList<Foo<*>>>.
I've tried doing mutableListOf<Foo<*>>(), but then I get KClass<MutableList<out Foo<*>>> instead of KClass<MutableList<Foo<*>>>.
How can I create the KClass instance that I need?
If you need to construct an Abc<MutableList<Foo<*>>> so its methods end up taking and returning MutableList<Foo<*>>, it's enough to cast it:
val abc = Abc(MutableList::class) as Abc<MutableList<Foo<*>>>
(you could cast the argument to KClass<MutableList<Foo<*>>> instead, but this makes no difference).
But as Tenfour04's comment says, there are no different KClass instances for MutableList<Foo<*>>, MutableList<String>, etc. so:
you can't expect actually different behavior for Abc<MutableList<Foo<*>>> and Abc<MutableList<AnythingElse>> except for the casts the compiler inserts;
by using type erasure in this way, you are giving up some type safety, and make possible ClassCastExceptions far from the original cast.
Why this code can be compiled and executed without erros?
val map = HashMap<Int, Long>()
val key :Int? = null
map.remove(key)
In MutableMap remove declared as accepting only non nullable key, so it shouldn't even compile. Is it a Kotlin type inference bug or am I missing something?
public fun remove(key: K): V?
Your code is perfectly fine as remove() allows nullable arguments - your map contents definition got nothing to it. When remove() is invoked, it would try to find matching requested key in the map and as it's not there (it's completely irrelevant why it's not there - it's valid case for key to be not present) nothing will happen. Where compiler will complain is on any attempt to put such key into your map. Then map definition kicks in and since it's known that nullable keys not allowed, such code won't even compile as this is clearly buggy code.
In this case, map.remove(key) doesn't not calls
public fun remove(key: K): V?
It calls an extension remove function:
public inline fun <#OnlyInputTypes K, V> MutableMap<out K, V>.remove(key: K): V? =
#Suppress("UNCHECKED_CAST") (this as MutableMap<K, V>).remove(key)
This function documentation says that it allows to overcome type-safety restriction of remove that requires to pass a key of type K.
It allows overcoming type-safety restriction because the key of the entry you are removing does not have to be the same type as the object that you pass into remove(key); the specification of the method only requires that they be equal. This follows from how the equals() method takes in an Any as a parameter, not just the same type as the object.
Although it may be commonly true that many classes have equals() defined so that its objects can only be equal to objects of its own class, there are many places where this is not the case. For example, the specification for List.equals() says that two List objects are equal if they are both Lists and have the same contents, even if they are different implementations of List. So, for example, according to the specification of the method, it is possible to have a MutableMap<ArrayList<Something>, Something> and call remove(key) with a LinkedList as an argument, and it should retrieve the key which is a list with the same contents. This would not be possible if this extension remove(key) didn't exist.[1]
Kotlin could warn or refuse to compile (would be good), but it doesn't (for now).
The reason for it being not as bad as it looks from a first glance is that you cannot put an Int? into a MutableMap<Int, Long> because
val map = HashMap<Int, Long>()
val key :Int? = null
map.put(key, 1) // <--- WON'T COMPILE [Type mismatch: inferred type was Int? but Int was expected]
map.remove(key)
Nevertheless, I think you are right by wondering about that method being compiled.
Eventually asking this question helped to find another question with explanation. In short, what actually happens is call of the extension function which have it's own type inference.
I am running some experiments on Kotlin's reflection.
I am trying to get a reflection object of a generic class with its argument.
In Java, that would be a ParameterizedType.
The way to get such a thing using Java's reflection API is a bit convoluted: create an anonymous subclass of a generic class, then get its super-type first parameter.
Here's an example:
#Suppress("unused") #PublishedApi
internal abstract class TypeReference<T> {}
inline fun <reified T> jGeneric() =
((object : TypeReference<T>() {}).javaClass.genericSuperclass as ParameterizedType).actualTypeArguments[0]
When I println(jGeneric<List<String?>>()), it prints java.util.List<? extends java.lang.String>, which is logical considering that Kotlin's List uses declaration-site out variance and that Java types have no notion of nullability.
Now, I would like to achieve the same kind of result, but with the Kotlin reflection API (that would, of course, contain nullability information).
Of course, List<String>::class cannot work since it yields a KClass. and I am looking for a KType.
However, when I try this:
inline fun <reified T> kGeneric() =
(object : TypeReference<T>() {})::class.supertypes[0].arguments[0].type
When I println(kGeneric<List<String?>>()), it prints [ERROR : Unknown type parameter 0], which is quite... well, anticlimactic ;)
How can I get, in Kotlin, a KType reflecting List<String> ?
To create a KType instance in Kotlin 1.1, you have two options:
To create a simple non-nullable type out of a KClass, where the class is either not generic or you can substitute all its type parameters with star projections (*), use the starProjectedType property. For example, the following creates a KType representing a non-nullable type String:
val nonNullStringType = String::class.starProjectedType
Or, the following creates a KType representing a non-nullable type List<*>:
val nonNullListOfSmth = List::class.starProjectedType
For more complex cases, use the createType function. It takes the class, type arguments and whether or not the type should be nullable. Type arguments are a list of KTypeProjection which is simply a type + variance (in/out/none). For example, the following code creates a KType instance representing List<String>:
val nonNullStringType = String::class.starProjectedType
val projection = KTypeProjection.invariant(nonNullStringType)
val listOfStrings = listClass.createType(listOf(projection))
Or, the following creates the type List<String>?:
val listOfStrings = listClass.createType(listOf(projection), nullable = true)
Both starProjectedType and createType are defined in package kotlin.reflect.full.
We're planning to introduce the possibility of getting a KType instance simply from a reified type parameter of an inline function which would help in some cases where the needed type is known statically, however currently it's not entirely clear if that's possible without major overhead. So, until that's implemented, please use the declarations explained above.