OK, this is a crazy idea and I realize that this is not going to be implemented any time soon. I just want you thoughts about it ;)
In Kotlin M12, isNotEmpty has been deprecated in favour of isEmpty().not(). Broadly all methods named isNotSomething have been deprecated in favour of isSomething.not().
I totally get it : maintaining those functions whould force maintainers to maintain a duplicate of each function that returns a boolean, adds boilerplate code and a lot of Java libraries that we use everyday are not using this convention so the new way is compatible with any method that returns a boolean.
It’s a total win, except that I liked and used the method isNotEmpty() a lot.
And, maybe it’s just be, but I find :
if (list.isNotEmpty()) {}To be a lot more readable than :
if (list.isEmpty().not()) {}
Just semantically, when you read it, the first is a state (not empty) while the other is a state that is then inverted (empty, not) and when I read it, I mentally needs more… neurons ?
So how about something like :
if (list.not:isEmpty()) {}
(Please remember that this proposal is a thought experiment, don’t go red yet :p)
This syntax would allow to call no-argument extension functions.
I’d limit this to extension functions to prevent abuses like
let name = db.getFirstName:getUser(“salomon”)Which would be horrifying
Once again I realize that Kotlin is closed to release and that it will certainly NOT be implemented, I’d just wanted to… share my frustration with this new .not() syntax
So, what do you think ?