has there ever been an effort to free constructors...

# getting-started

[y]

has there ever been an effort to free constructors from requiring : this(...), and just allowing any function which returns an instance of the class/object? in practice, I find this limitation of constructors makes them mostly useless, and so I'm forced to use companion objects or module-level free functions

[ephemient]

except for lacking an equivalent of https://openjdk.org/jeps/447 (which if implemented in Kotlin would widen the https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues?q=tag:%20{use-before-initialization} issues), I don't think anything about constructors can change while being Java compatible

[y]

thank you for the pointer about "use before initialization". interesting.

[rkechols]

I don't know if it addresses your issue exactly, but I've found that putting operator fun invoke(...): MyClass in the companion object works great. Doesn't have the limitations of a regular constructor, but it sure presents itself like a constructor

[Shawn]

echoing what Ryan said—you can always write a factory method in the companion object that looks like a constructor. The decision to require invoking this() right in the secondary constructor signature is very deliberate and was done to avoid a whole host of initialization bugs. This doesn't make secondary constructors useless; it helps minimize their misuse.

[y]

personally I dislike operator invoke, because IDE support sometimes fails to jump to it, because it's operator overloading and especially because it's yet another competing Kotlin syntax for a class constructor.

if I'm going to add a companion object "constructor", I prefer a descriptive name.