I see many people wanting collection literals, but...

# language-proposals

[janvladimirmostert]

I see many people wanting collection literals, but obviously there’s many problems in adding it in the language, like is { } a linkedHashMap, ConcurrentHashMap, etc

Suggestion, just like you can do operator overloading, maybe it’s worth providing something that allows literal overloading without actually providing a default implementation for it.

val listOfStrings = ["a", "b", "c"];

this will fail unless you extend String and give it squareBrackets implementation

literal fun  String.squareBrackets(varargs String values)  {
   // package values in whatever type of List you want
}

Not sure if the extensions should happen on String or on MutableList for example if you want MutableList to be your implementation of the square brackets literals.

Same for { }, allow literal extensions / overriding while the default implementation simply throws a NotImplementedException.