Receive transformation map function to send into `List<>.mapNotNull()` - kotlin

Question

Im trying to write a function like transform that receives a function that will be used inside of mapNotNull but I cant find a way to do it.
Example
val items: List<String?> = listOf(null, "cosa")
fun transform(transformer: (String) -> String?) {
items.mapNotNull(transformer) // <-------------------------------------- THIS DOES NOT COMPILE
}
fun main() {
val items: List<String?> = listOf(null, "cosa")
val transformer: (String) -> String? = {
null
}
val map = transform(transformer)
print(map)
}
You can check how this works here: play.kotlinlang
How can I declare the parameter of fun transform to be able to pass it inside of the mapNotNull ?

Answer 1

The mapNotNull function is defined as:
public inline fun <T, R : Any> Iterable<T>.mapNotNull(transform: (T) -> R?): List<R>
in other words, the type of the parameter to the transform lambda is T, where T is the type of the Iterable being operated on. In your case, your iterable is a List of type String?.
Therefore, you need to declare your transformer as type (String?) -> String?, and only the non-null results of that transform will be included in the result.
To update the code you supplied on play.kotlinlang, with a few additional modifications to make the type declarations a bit more idiomatic -- note, I've left the code mostly as-is, despite the odd use of the additional transform function:
val items = listOf<String?>(null, "cosa")
fun transform (transformer: (String?) -> String?): List<String> {
return items.mapNotNull(transformer)
}
fun main() {
val items = listOf<String?>(null, "cosa")
val transformer: (String?) -> String? = {
// this of course means the output of transform will always be empty
null
}
val map = transform(transformer)
print(map)
}

Answer 2

You have a list of nullable strings.
mapNotNull applies the transform function to an each element in a list and then checks if the result of this functions is null. So in this case, it passes a nullable string in the transformer function, and that function definitely cannot be of (String) -> String? type because the parameter here is a non-nullable string.
You should either declare the transformer function as (String?) -> String?, or remove nulls from list before calling mapNotNull:
items.filterNotNull().mapNotNull(transformer)
Another option is to wrap transformer into a lambda function before passing it to mapNotNull and handle null elements there, for example:
items.mapNotNull { e -> e?.let(transformer) }
this applies transformer function to an element only if it is not null.