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kotlinlang

what's the difference between a function and a val storing a lambda ? why do we need both ?

I would hazard a guess that its much more efficient both space and speedwise to use regular methods

hmm that doesn't really answer my question

you're implying that one is more performant than the other, how so ?

and do i understand correctly that by "space wise" you mean the amount of text in the code we have to write?

But why one is more performant than the other will depend on how you implement either

Ie. if you store the lambda in a field it will occupy memory for every object instance whereas method usually only take up memory once

i like to think of functions as simply being syntactic sugar for storing a lambda in a variable, and I'd like to know  how far exactly that is from the truth

I see there's a memory optimization for member functions, anything else?

I remember a similiar question for C#: <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7048850/are-lambda-functions-faster-than-delegates-anonymous-functions>

while this is not Kotlin, still maybe interesting

&gt; i like to think of functions as simply being syntactic sugar for storing a lambda in a variable, and I'd like to know  how far exactly that is from the truth

It's more the opposite way. A lambda in a val is storing an object to a separate class with an `invoke` member function which contains the code for your lambda.

I think it all depends on the target platform. For the JVM and probably native, using regular functions is cheaper. But for JavaScript, `fun` and `lambda var` should be roughly equivalent