Is there a way to do a when directly on bytes? or ...

# announcements

[bjonnh]

Is there a way to do a when directly on bytes? or do I always have to convert to Int?

[Chilli]

It should work for any type, I think. Does it throw any error for you?

[Brian Saltz Jr]

Make sure you’re using .toByte() on the literal in your when and it should work.

[Brian Saltz Jr]

E.g.:

when(b) {
  0.toByte() -> true
  else -> false
}

[bjonnh]

Ok I just wanted to know if there was a way to write bytes in a shorter way

[bjonnh]

I've been doing when(b.toInt()) { 0 -> true… }

[Brian Saltz Jr]

Understood. If we’re being pedantic about it, using <literal>.toByte() in the when clause is handled at compile time, so it’s technically fewer operations, even though it’s a bit uglier. But .toInt() is an extremely fast operation, so it’s not a big deal. Like I said, pedantic 🙂 I’d say go with whichever one looks better.

[bjonnh]

yeah I'm also not that concerned with speed here, but I was wondering if there was an "accepted" way

[Brian Saltz Jr]

Not especially, no. One other suggestion to consider might be to stick the values in constants so you have names for the bytes, e.g.

const val NULL_BYTE: Byte = 0

Depending on why you’re using a when on a byte to begin with, this may improve readability. Other than that, there’s no way to declare specify a byte literal in Kotlin, so do whatever makes the most sense for your code and you should be good.