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kotlinlang

Is there any reason that Kotlin allows for inner classes, but not inner objects?

objects are singletons hence it doesnt really make sense for it to be inner

Really this is an inner object:
```class Outer {
    val X = object { ... }
}```
So the question isn’t so much how to do it, but why you can’t do it with the syntax
```class Outer {
    inner object X { ... }
}```

I think probably the reason is just that the latter syntax is redundant to the former, but I don’t have any evidence for that claim :shrug:

the anonymous object syntax behaves differently though - e.g.
```class Outer {
 val X = object {
   val prop = "stringProp"
 }

 fun printIt() {
   print(X.prop) // this will be a compiler error
 }
}```

whereas
```class Outer {
  inner class Inner {
    val prop = "stringProp"
  }
  val X = Inner()

  fun printIt(){
    print(X.prop) // fine
  }
}```

You should read <https://kotlinlang.org/docs/object-declarations.html#object-declarations-overview>

&gt; the anonymous object syntax behaves differently though
that’s a good point, it’s definitely a serious limitation that hadn’t initially occurred to me. I can see why an `inner object` would be strictly more useful than an object expression, because it would create a _type_ as well as an instance

```yeah, thats what i would like - makes it much more useful imo, and yet limits the creation to one per instance of the outer class.```