Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By : Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu
Book Image

Learn Kotlin Programming - Second Edition

By: Stephen Samuel, Stefan Bocutiu

Overview of this book

Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language used for developing cross-platform applications. Complete with a comprehensive introduction and projects covering the full set of Kotlin programming features, this book will take you through the fundamentals of Kotlin and get you up to speed in no time. Learn Kotlin Programming covers the installation, tools, and how to write basic programs in Kotlin. You'll learn how to implement object-oriented programming in Kotlin and easily reuse your program or parts of it. The book explains DSL construction, serialization, null safety aspects, and type parameterization to help you build robust apps. You'll learn how to destructure expressions and write your own. You'll then get to grips with building scalable apps by exploring advanced topics such as testing, concurrency, microservices, coroutines, and Kotlin DSL builders. Furthermore, you'll be introduced to the kotlinx.serialization framework, which is used to persist objects in JSON, Protobuf, and other formats. By the end of this book, you'll be well versed with all the new features in Kotlin and will be able to build robust applications skillfully.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Fundamental Concepts in Kotlin
5
Section 2: Practical Concepts in Kotlin
15
Section 3: Advanced Concepts in Kotlin

Currying and partial application

A common technique in functional programming is the concept of currying. Currying is the process of transforming a function that accepts multiple parameters into a series of functions, each of which accepts a single function. Take the following definition of foo:

fun foo(a: String, b: Int) : Boolean 

The curried form would look like the following:

fun foo(a: String): (Int) -> Boolean 

Note that the curried foo returns a second function, which in turn, when invoked with an Int type, would return the Boolean type as before. Currying is a useful technique for allowing functions with multiple parameters to work with other functions that only accept single arguments.

Currying is related to the idea of partial application. Partial application is the process by which some, but not all, of the parameters of a function are specified in advance, returning...