Parentheses in anonymous functions

Support
1

It is not clear to me if/when/why there need to be parentheses in anonymous functions.

Let’s consider:

val numLetters = “Mississippi”.count({ letter →
letter == ‘s’
})
println(numLetters) //no parentheses, prints 4

However, parentheses need to be in:

println({
val currentYear = 2019
“Welcome to SimVillage, Mayor! (copyright $currentYear)”
}())

Without those parentheses, nothing will print. Both use a function (count() and println()) and both functions take a function argument as their parameter.

Why does one require () and the other does not?

2

You can leave out the parens only when passing an lambda function as the last parameter. println takes a String. In the bottom case you’re declaring a function and then call it so you turn it into a String and then pass the String. You’re not passing the lambda function so you can’t leave out the parens.

3

Those aren’t anonymous functions, they are lambda expressions. An anonymous function starts with fun().

In your first example you are defining a lambda and passing it to the count() function. The count() function will execute the lambda you pass to it.

In your second example you are defining a lambda and then invoking it yourself with the parentheses.

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