Typealiases and Java integration

Language Design
1

Considering the following example:

interface A {
    fun foo(n: Int): String
}

fun applyPrefix(prefix: String): A = object : A {
    override fun foo(n: Int) = prefix + n
}

Currently it’s not possible define applyPrefix in a more compact way (as reported in KT-7770):

fun applyPrefix(prefix: String): A = { n -> prefix + n } // syntax error

However now you can use the type aliases, so:

typealias A = (Int) -> String
fun applyPrefix(prefix: String): A = { n -> prefix + n }

This is great, but there is a little problem: it’s not the same thing from a Java perspective.
If you are using this library in a Java project, you see that applyPrefix returns a Function1<Integer, String>, so you cannot benefit from functional interfaces (for example, to search all usages of A functors).
Obviously the java project could define an interface like A converting Function1 properly, but this could be frustracting in a wide project.

In your opinion how this “problem” could be addressed?

2

I’m not sure what solution you expect to see, other than supporting SAM conversion for Kotlin classes (which may be implemented in a future version of Kotlin). Typealiases do not create new types, therefore, they cannot affect the Java-visible API of a Kotlin class in any way.

3

As Java developer I would expect an automatic conversion. I’m considering to adopt Kotlin, and sincerely this is the only thing I’ve found that Java seems to do better.